Posts Tagged: comprehensive sex education
Trump’s Plan to Fund Abstinence-Only Sex Ed is Grossly Misled
Last Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that grants for sexual education programs available through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program will favor programs that focus on abstinence-only sexual education. Both The Hill and The New York Times report that the grants will focus on supporting programs that follow one of two models: “sexual risk avoidance” and “sexual risk reduction.” The Times also notes that “the announcement … mentioned an ‘emphasis on cessation support,’ a phrase many involved in teen pregnancy programs interpreted as urging sexually active teenagers to stop having sex.” In essence, Trump’s administration is favoring abstinence-centric sex ed programs over comprehensive sexual education. They see avoidance as the main option, and the administration is leaning away from evidence-based programs. Here’s why this is a big… Read more »
Real Education for Healthy Youth Act Fights for Comprehensive Sex Education
We all remember the famous “don’t have sex or you will get pregnant and die, ” scene from Mean Girls. When a gym teacher in a health class gives a horrible sex education lesson that is not effective at all. When Mean Girls was written, that scene was probably meant to show a hyperbolized way sex ed is so poorly taught in school. Sadly, lessons like that are too real and happen too often across the nation. Sex education is suffering, and as a result young people are dealing with unwanted pregnancies without access to abortions, and a rise in sexually transmitted infections. In fact, people under the age of 25 are more than half the STI rate in the country. Abstinence education is not going to do anything… Read more »
The Consequences of Poor Sex-Ed
Recently, I stumbled on a sample of the abstinence book we used in my freshman health class in high school. Beside the fact it has not changed a single bit of content since 2003, its content is completely inaccurate. It hasn’t even changed the legal definition of marriage. It also provides small glimpse into the heteronormative conditioning that our inconsistent sex-education standards brings out. Starting with issue of even receiving some type of education, only 22 states require some type of sex-education curricula. Of those, 12 cover sexual orientation, and 9 have “no promo homo” laws that require open discrimination against queer youth. There are many school districts that also discriminate without help from their government. This fosters a hostile school and community environment for a teen who is out,… Read more »
