The American College of Pediatricians is alerting parents to a dangerous new mobile phone app called Nurx. Dubbed the “Uber for birth control,” Nurx enables teens as young as age 12 to obtain contraceptive and abortive medications including the pill, vaginal ring, Plan B and Ella without parental knowledge or local physician oversight. Sexual activity in adolescence is associated with harmful emotional and physical consequences including depression, suicide, sexually transmitted infections
(STIs), and sexual exploitation at the hands of abusive boyfriends or sex traffickers. Easy access to contraceptives that bypasses parents and a physician visit, as Nurx does, increases the likelihood of teens experiencing these bad outcomes. Adolescents are cognitively and emotionally immature. They need parental wisdom and oversight to compensate for their emotional impulsivity and their limited capacity to assess risk. All hormone-based contraception has serious potential side effects including stroke and cancer; some increase the chance of contracting an STI. MORE
