By Gemma Doherty
SYDNEY — Doctors, nurses and counsellors in the NSW public health system have been ordered by NSW Health to report people under the age of 16 who admit they are having sex. Health workers will be compelled to notify the Department of Community Services.
This completely defies patient confidentiality. Health professionals and workers in services specialising in sexual counselling such as family planning fear that the requirement will deter teenagers from seeking advice on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases.
Enforcing age of consent laws in this way will force young people engaging in consensual sexual activities underground and into unsafe situations.
This is the latest in several attacks upon youth rights in NSW — after increased police powers granted under a new street safety bill.
The requirement puts decision making about young people's sexuality into the hands of the state. No-one is in any position to tell anyone else when or with whom or how they should be having sex, as long as it is not in a coercive situation.
There is no evidence to indicate that the notification requirement will aid in reducing child abuse, because it is concerned with dobbing in consenting young people.
What the requirement will do is prevent young people gaining advice about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. A report in 1990 by Central Sydney Health Services found that adolescents required a health service that is confidential, free and readily accessible.
Some 14-year-olds are having sex. It's important that they know what they are doing, rather than remain ignorant and, in the age of HIV, fall into a life-threatening situation.
Young people are one of the highest risk groups in terms of unprotected sex. In 1992, 60% of high school students over the age of 15 were sexually active, while a third of year 10 students did not know how sexually transmitted diseases were passed on.
Pretending that teenagers are not sexually active and limiting the availability of information on how to make the experience safe and healthy is counterproductive and exhibits reactionary moralism.
In NSW recently, gays and lesbians have taken to the streets to demand that the unequal age of consent be removed. The new requirement means that young people under the age of 16 will also be targeted by the anti-sex brigade.
Resistance has always campaigned for the protection of young people's democratic rights. We believe that young people should have the freedom to make decisions about their own lives.
Under the guise of protecting young people from paedophilia, young people engaging in sexual activities will be made to feel like criminals. But the best way to guard against young people getting into coercive and unsafe situations is to have open and non-judgmental educational discussions about sexuality.
Age of consent laws should be a means of protecting young people from being sexually exploited by people in a position of power over them — not a prohibition on consenting activity between people of the same age.