24 December 2007
A rather odd topic for the day before the Christmas holiday, but to my mind, a very important one. The Bush administration is cutting off funding for abstinence-only sex education in Washington state because our schools provide additional, medically accurate information about preventing unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. I believe that the federal government is doing our young people a great disservice. Federal funding for sex education in our school system is tied to abstinence only programs. The do-gooders who drafted and passed this legislation had their heads in the sand. I raised six children, four boys and two girls. As a parent, part of your teaching includes “wait, wait, wait”, but as a responsible parent, one also needs to teach “safe sex”, which includes information about condoms and responsibility for actions. Knowing the raging hormones that boys experience during their teen years, it seems rather naive to really believe the “wait” teaching is going to happen. The incidence of sexually transmitted diseases is rapidly growing because of oral sex, used by young people who are “abstaining” from intercourse. Our young people need more detailed sex education especially in the area of “safe sex”.
Fourteen states have already refused federal money for their sex education programs, much needed by our young people. The U. S. has high rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and HIV/AIDS infections. These STD’s are not acquired by practicing abstinence. The schools need programs that provide honest, age-appropriate, and medically accurate sex education that promotes abstinence and provides young people with the information they need to protect themselves. The federal “abstinence-only” programs censor life-saving information. 99 percent of Americans believe it is appropriate for young people to have information about STDs, and 94 percent of Americans think it is appropriate to teach young people about birth control. Why isn’t this happening?
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