Teenage Pregnancy Interview

Theme and Issue Research

Interview with Dawn Bishop – Family Planning


1)How long have you worked for NHS family planning?

8 years

2)You must deal with million of cases, how many would you say over the past 8 years have stuck in your mind?

Not as many as you think, its my job. I’d say less than 10.

3) Can you tell me some?

There was an eleven year old, but she looked really young and was very quite. She was very scared so she asked us (NHS) to ring and tell her mum. Her mother was mortified and she was made to terminate.

One girl had had four terminations over the past 18 months. She didn’t bother or care about contraception and just thought abortion was her way out of it.

A 14 year old was in care and hung out of a sexual active group of 17 year olds. She thought it would be cool and decided to copy. She ended getting pregnant and having the baby.

Last year a 17 year old got pregnant. Her dad brought her to the clinic which is quite unusual, for a termination. She then got pregnant again but left it until 20 weeks until she told her dad. And she knows that at 20 weeks we are not aloud to terminate by law, she would have to go private.

What do you think of sexual education in schools?

I wouldn’t really know since I left myself apart from my sons primary school ones that I have to of consented to. I know school nurses are still around to talk to as well. But yet there are millions of girls who come to me and millions who don’t. I do think that more should be done to educate. Teaching in schools means the kids get embarrassed and laugh. If there could, there should be one to one sessions, where I think the children would listen more. Then they wouldn’t be to embarrassed to ask questions because their friends aren’t there. We shouldn’t just rely on the schools for teaching it because some of the responsibility is with the parents. But yet even today the parents seem too embarrassed to talk about it. I don’t think that any younger than those of year five should be taught sex because they wouldn’t understand.