Sex education in schools has been a hot topic in the United
States for many years. There is a lack of universal standards when it comes to
educating adolescents about safe sex practices and the curricula that are
currently out there are often inadequate to say the least. Nevertheless, it is
necessary that we continuously revisit the issue because 30 percent of teens
report their parents have never spoken with them about sex and most teens can
think of someone they know who has had devastating consequences on their future
potential due to an unwanted pregnancy.
Recently, it has been no secret that the Trump
administration has been out to cut funding in many organizations dedicated to
creating and evaluating sex education methods. Fortunately, after the court
ruled in favor of the 81 organizations, working to reduce teen pregnancy and
create effective ways to disseminate sex education, the Trump administration
announced that they won’t cut sex education funding established during the
Obama era like they initially threatened. The caveat is that the Trump
administration has a special place in their heart for abstinence only sex
education programs and seems to only be willing to allocate funds to these
types of sex education programs.
Sex education is
often taught in one of two ways: abstinence only or a more comprehensive
curriculum that include information about abstinence, pregnancy prevention, STI
prevention and sexual harassment. Studies show that comprehensive sex education
programs contributed to older age of initial sexual encounter teens, consistent
use of protection, decrease in unintended pregnancies and reduction in STIs. Maybe
if comprehensive sex education programs were more prevalent 15- to 24-year-olds
wouldn't account for nearly half of all new cases of sexually transmitted
infections each year.
Although keeping STIs in our communities at bay is a big
public health issue everyone should be concerned about, we cannot forget how an
unwanted teen pregnancy disproportionally affects women. In areas such as Texas
where 60% of school districts teach abstinence only programs, the teen
pregnancy rate is 40-50% higher than the national average. An unwanted
pregnancy can be devasting to a women’s mental health and has the potential to restrict
her future goals personally and professionally. Here are some stats to help things
soak in:
- In 2011, only 51 percent of teenage mothers earned a high school diploma.
- Thirty percent of women who drop of out high school claim to have done so because they got pregnant.
- Less than two percent of women who get pregnant before 18 have a college degree by the time they’re 30.
We all know that education is critical to social and
economic development, it’s time to make the fear of comprehensive sex education
a thing of the past.
Joy Fatunbi DUCOM 2019
References
Changing Teen Sex trends. Raychelle Cassada Lohmann. July
23, 2018
