In January of 2011, New York City schools quietly launched a pilot program to dispense free contraceptives, including both oral contraceptives and the morning after pill, plan b, to students at more than a dozen high schools in the city. This was known as the CATCH program for Connecting Adolescence to comprehensive healthcare. ( Alexandra sifferlin, Time Health and Family).This program is an expansion of an existing program that was run privately. Now more than 14 schools in the city participate in the program. The schools that participate in the program where chosen because of their teen pregnancy rates, or due to a lack of health care clinics in their general area. Girls as young as fourteen years old, can now obtain contraceptives, such as the birth control pill, or even Plan B emergency contraceptive without parental notification. This topic seems to be very interesting and with many different opinions as was demonstrated in a recent class discussion bringing on arguments involving both religion and moral standpoint. This program is in fact, a very productive one. There have been over a thousand students that have turned to help from their school nurses for this matter. Some say that this program is sending kids the message that it is ok to have un-protected intercourse. I feel that it is a tool to help stop unwanted pregnancy in teens that will be having unprotected sex despite knowing the dangers that come along with it anyway. There are many people that have formulated an opinion on Plan B before ever doing any research on the pill to support their claim. Plan B is nothing more than a higher dose of the hormone known as Levonorgestrel, which is found in many of the birth control pills that physicians have been prescribing for decades. The Plan B pill works in a similar way to help prevent pregnancy from happening. Its main function is to stop the release of an egg from the ovary, but it also works in different ways. This pill can prevent the sperm from uniting with the egg, which is known as fertilization. It also can work by preventing implantation or attachment to the uterus. In no way is this process to be confused with the process of terminating a pregnancy thus eliminating the misconception that the Plan B pill is the abortion pill. Life begins at conception which is when the sperm meets the egg. Plan B eliminates conception from ever happening thus ending the argument that it is the abortion pill. To get the Plan B
