Much Ado About Abortion…
… but what about sex education? By Heather Wood Rudúlph
The Life vs. Choice debate is hot and heavy again. Of course this polarizing issue will never completely go away, but in the wake of a new Supreme Court Justice pick, there’s been nonstop media attention on where Americans stand on abortion. According to a new Gallup Poll released this week, 51% identify as pro-life, marking the first time since 1995 (the first year Gallup started asking the question) that the scales have tipped that way. President Obama is under fire from both conservatives and liberals over whether he’s going to choose a new Justice who will defend Roe v. Wade, and to what degree. And all the hubbub surrounding the pro-life President’s commencement speech this weekend to a bunch of Catholic Notre Dame graduates makes it seem like he was threatening to perform an abortion right there on stage.
Yes, things can get ugly in the abortion debate, but what’s missing — again — from this all-important discourse is any real focus on sex education. Preventing more unwanted pregnancies — especially among teenagers — is a win-win for society and morality (a point Obama stressed to the Notre Dame class). But the national discussion on sex education has been censored to a point where any mention of birth control near a school is treated as if a child predator were on the loose. (Anti-abortion activists have no problem parading in front of health clinics and schools with super-sized photos of aborted baby parts, but bring up birth control in a classroom and that’s crossing the line?)
The fact is teenagers have sex, and they’re having it sooner and more carelessly than previous generations. And that’s just dumb. One inalienable benefit of time ticking by is the opportunity to take lessons from our past to better prepare for the future. Look just about anywhere in America where comprehensive sex education is included in school curriculum and you’ll see fewer teen pregnancies and STDs. But in most states, contraceptives are still treated like porn. Only 69 percent of school districts in the United States teach sex education, and most of those that do focus exclusively on abstinence. And we know how well that works.
Of course, how we educate is important too. Go rogue — like the U.K.’s United Health Service did by releasing a video of a school girl giving birth on a football field (filmed like it was shot from a cell phone) — and you’ll irk sex-ed naysayers and get banned by YouTube. But do it just right, like the funny/informative Midwest Teen Sex Show, and you have a chance at actually getting a safe-sex message through to teenagers (and possibly scoring a development deal with Comedy Central!).
The bottom line is, we can’t afford to keep sex information from teens. The idea that hormonal adolescents will stick to a chaste moral code because their parents, church, or teen pop idols say it’s the right (or supercool) thing to do is naïve at best and criminal at worst. Not educating our youth about the ticking time bombs they have in their pants is akin to sending untrained soldiers into the mountains of Afghanistan without so much as a map.
If ever there was a time to heat-up the message boards, this is it: teen sex, abortion, and politics. Bring it.
Heather Wood Rudúlph is the co-founder and editor of SirensMag.com.
Tags: abortion, abortion debate, condoms, contraception, Obama, pro choice, pro life, reproductive rights, sex education, stds, supreme court justice
May 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Thanks for writing about this. I couldn’t agree more. While I am pro-choice, I also think we need to be minimizing abortions in this country as much as possible. The best way to do that is through comprehensive, age-appropriate sex ed in schools.
I’ve never quite figured out why so many people are against comprehensive sex ed. If you open up the discussion to talking about STDs and teen pregnancy, the abstinence argument becomes a lot more compelling. If you’re going to tell kids to delay sex, at least tell them WHY doing so is important.
What’s more, teen sexuality is a public health issue. If taxpayers are going to be footing the bill for more health care in the future, we should be focusing on prevention. And sex ed is a very effective preventative measure for a whole slew of health issues, such as STDs & AIDS, teen pregnancy, mental health, etc.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Not talking about contraception seems to be a symptom of not talking about sex in general. Creating a mystique or taboo around sex is hardly healthy for people in the long run. Frankly I would rather teach teenagers that sex is a normal part of a mature, supportive relationship. Otherwise we end up with kids who are too inexperienced and too unprepared to make appropriate decisions.
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