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Despite being denied permission from the government for the plan, Ségolène Royal has pressed ahead with a controversial initiative to offer a ‘contraception pass’ to teenage girls across the Poitou Charentes region.

Never one to shy away from controversy, the president of the regional council plans to send out vouchers to nurses in lycées across the region, which can be distributed to female students.  The vouchers can be exchanged for condoms and medical check-ups to the value of 82 euros.

In a TV interview, Royal admitted that the education minister Luc Chatel had blocked the initiative, but she defiantly responded by saying “...I am going to do it anyway because I want to fight against teenage pregnancies.”  She added “Schools give out the morning-after pill, but prevention would be better.”

The literature on the Poitou-Charentes website points out that there are around 6,000 teenage pregnancies in France every year, and there were 455 in the Poitou Charentes region in 2007.

Full details of the initiative can be accessed via the Region Poitou-Charentes website.

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