Abstract

PIP: The Alan Guttmacher Institute's "State Reproductive Health Monitor: Legislative Proposals and Actions" provides US legislative information on family planning, sex education, and teenage pregnancy. The listing contains information on legislation including the state, the identifying legislative number, the sponsor, the committee, the date the bill was introduced, a description of the bill, and the bill's status. The bills cover: 1) family planning services and programs, e.g., requiring the Department of Human Services to provide written information concerning the availability of the Norplant contraceptive implant through the Medicaid program adding chlamydia screening to the existing law, or requesting a study assessing the social and financial impact of mandatory health insurance for contraceptive devices; 2) parental consent and notice for contraception legislation; 3) school-based clinics and school health services, e.g., establishing health screening programs in public schools, allowing school-based health centers to dispense drug prescriptions; 4) sex and health education, e.g., urging all school boards to require all public elementary, middle, and high schools that teach sex education to emphasize abstinence from sexual intercourse as the only effective protection against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases and to require that information about sexual assault by an acquaintance and related issues be included in sex education courses in public schools; 5) teenage pregnancy prevention and care programs, e.g., requesting the public health, welfare, and labor committee to conduct a study of efforts to reduce infant mortality, teen pregnancy, and related problems as well as establishing and maintaining pregnancy and parenting education programs in secondary schools; and 6) infertility legislation on assisted reproductive technologies, including issues such as clarifying the status of children and adults born from donated eggs or preembryos, relinquishment of rights by the donors of eggs, sperms, or preembryos, allowable compensation for such donations, and the granting of legal status to fertilized ex utero embryos.