Last night during his first State of the Union address, President Obama declared he would stop wasteful spending on programs that do not work. Well, I know the very first thing that should be on the chopping block- abstinence only education. It’s expensive, divisive, and worst of all, it does not work! I have been an opponent to abstinence only education for years, since my personal encounter with scary photos of herpes and hearing about condom failure rates back in eighth grade.
Abstinence only education made no sense for eighth grade, because I already knew people who were having all kinds of unsafe sex. Abstinence only education relies on a lot of religious background, beliefs about correct behavior and attitudes that I never shared, and my 13 year old mind found to be intolerable. The education that I received promoted fear, ignorance and shame about sex, and honestly the only thing that I learned was that I needed to go outside the school system to get accurate and non-based information. For years I have worked as a health educator for teens, both in California and in Georgia. In Georgia, it is illegal to demonstrate how to put on a condom in a public school. I, along with another member of our student lead health organization, did a presentation at a non public school on how to put on a condom for teenage girls who already had at least one baby.
In a regular abstinence only education curriculum, those girls are propped up as examples of bad choices and poor character, rather than acknowledging the fact that most young women are unaware of how their bodies work. I remember arguing with a congresswoman about the need for comprehensive health education in schools, and she replied “kids know what they are doing already, they know.” No, Ms. Davis, they did not know. I have friends who are teachers in California who have students as young as 12 who are pregnant in their class. I know not everyone is having sex (less than half of all high school students are engaging in sex) but those who are do not know how to protect themselves all the time.
For me, when think about my little cousin being pregnant, and read the New York Times article on teenage pregnancy rates rising since the late 1990’s, and I reflect on the large budget for abstinence only education, I just get angry. Clearly, abstinence education is not working. Virginity pledges, scare tactics, medically inaccurate information mixed in with character judgment is not the way to educate about sex. Let’s make some change we can believe in and stop federal funds for abstinence only education.