Girls of all ages become pregnant, even though the law in this country says that girls under 16 should not be having sex. The government counts how many girls under the age of 16 become pregnant each year. The most recent estimate is about 2,500 pregnancies a year.
If you are pregnant when you have an operation, X-ray, or special scan, it may harm your unborn baby. This is especially true at the beginning of a pregnancy, when you might not even realise that you are pregnant.
We understand that many teenage girls are not having sex, so it is not possible for them to be pregnant. We do not know who is and who isn’t sexually active, so to ensure we care for you safely, we ask everyone aged 12 and over if it is possible they might be pregnant.
By doing this, we hope to prevent the possibility of harming an unborn baby, and the distress this would cause to the baby’s mother.
It is important that you tell a nurse or doctor so that we can decide what to do next. Everything you tell us will be treated confidentially, which means that we will not tell anyone else without your permission. You may be offered a pregnancy test, which is done by testing a sample of your urine. As the pregnancy test is not always reliable very early in a pregnancy, you may still be pregnant even if the result is negative. In this case, a doctor will talk to you about whether you should go ahead with your operation, X-ray, or special scan.
20-20 © RNOH
Date of publication: February 2020
Date of next review: February 2022
Authors: Dr Susan Lowery, Dr Julia Taylor
Page last updated: 09 July 2025