The morning-after pill is distributed to under-age girls by the authorisation of NHS trusts.
High street chemists throughout England are giving the morning-after pill to under-age girls with the approval of, and in some cases at the insistence of, NHS trusts.
According to details obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, 84 per cent of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) have authorized the supply of the morning-after pill to under-16s. The findings have been published in a report by the Family Education Trust.
Of those PCTs, most (70 per cent) said that under some circumstances they would be prepared to insist that the drug be made available to under-16s as a condition of granting a pharmacy licence.
The majority said that this policy was based on the Government's teenage pregnancy strategy and high teenage pregnancy rates.
Yet despite the strategy the UK still has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe with 39,804 under-18 conceptions in England in 2005, 46.9 percent of which ended in abortion.
Recent guidance from the National Institute of Clinical Health Excellence recommends that vulnerable women under age 18 who are pregnant or are already mothers be told "how to get and use emergency contraception" as part of a strategy for reducing under-18 pregnancies.
Norman Wells, Director of the Family Education Trust, said: "In the absence of any evidence that the 'morning-after pill' leads to a reduction in under-16 conceptions, it is untenable for PCTs to insist on supply to underage girls as a condition of granting a pharmacy licence.
"Rather than continuing to formulate policy on the assumption that teenagers will engage in sexual activity irrespective of anything parents and teachers say to them, we need to recognise that the majority of young people under the age of 16 are not sexually active, and to support and affirm them in their exercise of self-control.
"Until we overcome our obsession with sexual expression and our phobia about saving sex for marriage, we are unlikely to make any real progress."
