BALTIMORE – While a Maine school board vote to allow school-based clinics to dispense contraceptives without parental consent created headlines nationwide, middle school students across Maryland have had access to contraceptives for years.

Girls in Baltimore middle schools have had access to birth control pills for more than 20 years at school-based clinics. Advocates believe the program has helped cut the city’s teen birth rate.

And under a Maryland law dating to the 1970s, minors are allowed confidential access to contraception, meaning any adolescent girl can ask her doctor for birth control. Twenty other states and the District of Columbia have similar laws.

In Maine, school officials voted to allow King Middle School in Portland to become the first in Maine to make a full range of contraception available, including birth control pills and patches. Students would need parental permission to use the city-run health center in the school, but they wouldn’t have to tell their parents they were seeking birth control.

In Maryland, only schools with health clinics on-site can dispense birth control pills and other prescription contraceptives. The Baltimore Health Department has 15 clinics in school buildings, including three in middle schools and two others in K-8 schools. Montgomery and Prince George’s counties also have a handful of clinics.

The number of births to mothers under 15 in Maryland has dropped from 225 in 1995 to 113 in 2005, the most recent year available. In Baltimore, there were 113 births to girls under 15 in 1995, and 44 in 2005.

Dr. Laurie S. Zabin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said she disagrees with critics who say the availability of contraception encourages sexual activity.

“I don’t really think that the primary objection that the public has holds any water – that it encourages sex,” Zabin said. “It’s sort of like [saying] the availability of seat belts causes more traffic accidents. The availability of contraception does not cause risky sex.”

Even though the program is long-standing, some parents still don’t like it.

Jean Pfister, whose 11-year-old daughter attends Lansdowne Middle School, told The (Baltimore) Sun she strongly opposes, on moral and religious grounds, providing contraception to students at middle schools.

“Are they going to take responsibility when the birth control doesn’t work?” she said. “Are they going to take responsibility since they have told these kids that it was OK to get birth control without their parents knowing?”