Two Day Magazine

Get this: Since 1992, the US government has spent almost $1 BILLION dollars (those are your tax dollars at work, ladies and gents) on ideologically-based abstinence-only sex education. What’s even more astounding is that comprehensive sex ed (you know the kind, where you actually get information on both abstinence and contraceptives and STDs) has received almost NO federal funding whatsoever. This situation has worked out great for MTV, though, allowing them to create such television masterpieces such as “Teen Mom” and “16 and Pregnant”.

So, when President Obama released his budget earlier this year and the $50 MILLION dollars (per year since 1996) for abstinence-only programs was missing, I exhaled a big sigh of relief! Finally, logic was back in charge and we were going to prevent teen pregnancies and unwanted pregnancies through age-appropriate sex education! Well, then I woke up from that fantasy, only to find out that Senator Orrin Hatch has attached $50 MILLION a year for fives years into the private-insurance-friendly health care bill; not only did they attach it, but it has PASSED through to the final version and all my hope and change went right out the window. Again.

No one has really explained publicly why the “Just Say No” sex bill has had a second coming, but there are rumors that it was to appease socially conservative Democrats (aren’t those called Republicans?) and now we have to foot the bill for this pointless funding to a program that has shown time and time again IT DOESN’T WORK.

The Health and Human Service Department states that there are 8 specific criteria to receive “No Sex” funding, including:

Teach that a mutually faithful, monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of sexual activity. (According to who, exactly? This sounds a little preachy to me!)

Teach that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects. (What are those effects exactly? What is wrong in taking the car for a test drive before you take it home?)

Teach that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, STDs and other associated health problems. (While this is technically true, there are lots of other ways to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancy and it is disturbing that these life-saving bits of information are overlooked and blatantly ignored.)

Now, I don’t want to be a debbie-downer, and there is some good news for comprehensive sex-education, like the fact that it is (FOR THE FIRST TIME) receiving $75 million a year for five years. But, still, there is going to be $250 MILLION wasted over the next five years being spent on “No Sex” only programs. What gives?

Since 1996, abstinence-only education took root when funding for these ideologically based programs was attached to the former President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform legislation. They also attached a Congressional mandate for a long-term study of abstinence programs to see how they impacted teens having sex. In 2007, the authors of the mandated study issued a report that stated:

“Findings indicate that youth in the program group were no more likely than the control group youth to have abstained from sex, and among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age.”

AKA IT DOESN’T WORK.

In fact, the April 4 edition of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine include the finding that after 14 years of steadily declining, teen birth rates increased in 2006 and 2007.  This is after a full decade of these “Just Say No” programs being heavily emphasized to our youth culture. In fact, I remember my senior year public school sex-ed class (in 2002) and I never learned about how to protect myself against STDs or unwanted pregnancy. The teacher was skittish about talking about sex at all, to be frank. All I was told was that sex was bad and I shouldn’t do it. (I’m paraphrasing, of course!)Which made me only want to do it all the more....hey, give me a break I was 17! Luckily, I was a precocious kid and learned the information on my own.

However, not everyone had access to information and not only are we seeing an increase in unwanted pregnancy, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 19 MILLION new STD infections are occurring every year in the USA, with 48% of those infections happening to our youth (ages 15-24). What’s crazier is that this age group only represents 25% of the sexually active population in the USA, but they are the least educated and prepared when it comes to their bodies and sexuality.

What’s even worse is the idea that conservatives are fighting against federally funded comprehensive sex-ed. One example comes from Wisconsin, where the governor recently signed a law that requires schools to adopt programs that use comprehensive curriculum, including information about birth control and STDs, as well as abstinence.  In fact, the law bans abstinence-only programs. Welcome Wisconsin to the 21st century! (Applause, applause)

However, Scott Southworth, a district attorney from Juneau County, called the sex-ed law a “sick and shameful piece of legislation that encourages sex among minors.” He sent a letter to some school districts warning them that the law forces them to “instruct children on sex-for-pleasure and exposes the teacher to the risk of criminal liability.” Well, we know someone who certainly isn’t having sex for pleasure! And, is he really threatening school districts with criminal action because he is scared of what will happen when children have access to information about their own bodies?

Here is more of the ridiculous letter:

“Forcing our schools to instruct children on how to utilize contraceptives encourages our children to engage in sexual behavior, whether as a victim or an offender.”

“It is akin to teaching children about alcohol use, then instructing them on how to make mixed alcoholic drinks.”

What exactly was this guy drinking when he wrote this fantastical description of comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education that is made to prevent the spreading of disease and unwanted pregnancy (which means less abortions, which should get the conservatives all hot and bothered).

This guy is totally out of touch. In 2007, the HHS report stated that “about half of all high school youth report having had sex, and more than one in five report having had four or more partners by the time they graduate from high school. One-quarter of sexually active adolescents nationwide have an STD, and many STDs are lifelong viral infections with no cure.”

Having been in high school fairly recently myself, I can definitely attest to those statistics! Everyone I knew was engaging in some form of sexual activity, whether it was intercourse or oral sex. And, everyone seemed completely clueless as to what to do when they got pregnant or an STD. They were labeled and gossiped about. Wanna talk about morals? Let’s go there! It is morally WRONG to deny information to our youth that could potentially save their lives! Keeping children and adolescents in the dark about their bodies and sex is equivalent to keeping them enslaved. Without knowledge, there is no power, and no one can feel more powerless than when they have no knowledge of themselves.