Associated organisations have been established to study and monitor trends and statistics as well as provide support and guidance to adolescents.
The findings of the study concluded that there was a clear increase in sexual intercourse among young single women after the advent of the contraceptive pill in 1961.
[10] By 1969, Brook Advisory Centres were offering contraceptive advice to over ten thousand unmarried people under 25, the majority aged between 19 and 21, with around one in six being under 19.
In 1971, a survey of Scottish single female students revealed that a third had had sexual intercourse by the age of 18, with over half not using any form of contraception.
This prompted the British Medical Association to advise doctors to maintain young patients' confidentiality when seeking contraception.
[11] Controversy was also sparked when a 12-year-old girl who had recently undergone an abortion was put on the contraceptive pill with her parents' consent by gynecologist Dr Mary Wilson at Calthorpe nursing home in Birmingham.
[13] In 1975, under the new National Health Service reorganisation act, contraception was made available free of charge to everyone, including single people and those aged under 16.
[17] In 1984, a high court ruling in favour of Victoria Gillick, it was deemed illegal for health professionals to advise or give girls under 16 contraceptives without parental consent except in exceptional circumstances;[18] the number of girls under 16 visiting family planning clinics each year dropped to twelve thousand in response.
When the House of Lords overturned the high court ruling in 1985 and confidential contraceptive advice to young people was restored,[19] the number rose again to sixteen thousand per year.
[27] The rate of new cases of gonorrhoea diagnosed at sexual health clinics amongst girls under 16 in England increased more than threefold from 2.76 per hundred thousand of the population in 1966 to 9.38 in 1976.
[28][29] In 1971 the number of teenagers visiting sexual health clinics with gonorrhoea reached over ten thousand, 60% were girls and one in twenty were under 16.