THE DEBATE OVER sex education and the continuing increase in the number of school-based sexuality programs have not been the only response to widespread alarm over rising rates of teen pregnancy in recent years. Concerned parents, educators, and community leaders have also begun to employ school-based health clinics. These facilities, usually located either within high schools or in separate buildings on high school campuses, are more comprehensive versions of nurses' offices, familiar in many American schools since the early 1900s. Like traditional school nurses, school-based clinics offer a wide variety of first aid and health services.

What makes school-based clinics controversial is, unlike school nurses, they also provide sex education information, tests for pregnancy and STDs, and birth control counseling and referrals. Some of these clinics go a step further and actually dispense contraceptives to teenagers. Some people...