The national furor over a controversial decision to hand out birth control pills to 11- and 12-year-old girls in Maine without their parents’ consent has hopefully sent a message to other school systems around the country: Don’t even think about it. Not only is this an outrageous violation of parental rights, it’s bad education policy.

Apologists for the values-free, they’re-gonna-do-it-anyway approach to sex education will have a hard time explaining what happened at King Middle School in Portland, which has been handing out free condoms — and not telling parents — since 2000. Such enlightened access to birth control is supposed to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies.