Sexual Education in a Post-Roe America
Howdy, readers (aka my dad). Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, I've been overwhelmingly frustrated by the fact that nothing is being done to educate adolescents on preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Many students across the US are being denied comprehensive sexual education through abstinence-based methods.
The United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates among wealthy countries. Every year in America, 850,000 teenagers become pregnant, and adults under 25 endure roughly 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections. This results from unhealthy and uninformed sexual behaviors and decisions rooted in widespread, insufficient sexual education. In a post-Roe America, a country with one of the highest maternal mortality rates, comprehensive sexual education has never been so crucial as to ensure teenage pregnancy rates decrease. Comprehensive sexual education positively impacts adolescents' understanding of and relationship with sexual and reproductive health. Contrary to what some believe, evidence has shown that sex education doesn't increase sexual activity, risk-taking, or the rate of sexually transmitted infections. Abstinence-based sexual education programs have shown to be ineffective in reducing and delaying sexual activity among the youth.
Congress spent more than $2 billion on abstinence-only programs in the US from 1982 to 2017 despite such programs being discredited and rejected by pediatric health professionals on a wide scale. These programs promote abstinence outside of marriage while strictly denying adolescents factual information about the health and safety benefits of contraceptives and condom use. Two papers show that this approach isn't effective in delaying sexual initiation or minimizing sexual risk behaviors. Scientific research studies have found that Abstinence-Only-Until-Mariage sexual education is medically and ethically flawed. The researchers found such programs to violate adolescent human rights as they deny the youth medical facts, uphold dangerous gender stereotypes, stigmatize the LGBTQIA+ community, and discredit public health programs.
The assistant professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Leslie Kantor, believes that adolescents have the right to comprehensive sex education, which equips them with the tools and knowledge to live safe and healthy lives. She continued, saying, "Withholding critical health information from young people is a violation of their rights. Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs leave all young people unprepared and are particularly harmful to young people who are sexually active, who are LGBTQ, or have experienced sexual abuse."
The curriculum utilized in abstinence-based programs weakens and distorts knowledge regarding contraceptives' effectiveness, perpetuates gendered stereotypes, prejudices as scientific facts, and contains basic scientific errors.
In a survey, 89% of respondents agreed that sex education should concentrate on pregnancy prevention and STIs, particularly HIV and that young people must know about contraception and STI prevention. Just 15% of adults in America agree with abstinence-based teaching methods.
John Santelli, professor of Population and Family Health and the Mailman School, said, "While abstinence is theoretically effective, in actual practice, intentions to abstain from sexual activity often fail. These programs simply do not prepare young people to avoid unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases."
According to guttmacher.org, a platform offering informational handouts on comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), there are seven crucial components that comprehensive sexuality education entails. These components include gender, sexual and reproductive health and HIV, sexual rights and sexual citizenship, pleasure, violence, diversity, and relationships. CSE enables positive attitudes in life, like open-mindedness, self-respect and respect for others, positive self-esteem, nonjudgmental attitudes, and a positive outlook toward one's sexual and reproductive health.
CSE provides students with an understanding of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and an awareness of common symptoms, STI prevention, treatment, and resources for support upon contraction. CSE educates adolescents about their anatomy, reproductive processes, condom usage, and other contraceptives. CSE also informs students about facts and information concerning pregnancy prevention, services, and safe versus unsafe abortions.
CSE provides adolescents with an understanding of international human rights and national policies. It offers a rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health education while acknowledging the social, cultural, and ethical obstacles to individuals' sexual and reproductive rights. CSE is aware that sexuality and culture are diverse and that not everybody has the same degree of access to services and resources. CSE acknowledges this principle and highlights the wide range of sexual and gender identities. This is extremely important, considering that 50% of American LGBTQIA+ youth have legitimately considered suicide in the last year. Including and educating this community in sexual education in schools could positively impact this current statistic. This isn't to say that including the LGTBQIA+ community will solve this problem, but considering that 75% of the community experienced anxiety symptoms this year, 61% experienced symptoms of depression, and 82% of surveyed youth wanted mental health resources, it's safe to say that inclusive CSE would serve as an advantage, not a disadvantage.
While CSE bills have been brought up, I believe Congress must establish an entirely new set of ideas and proposals within the context of a post-roe American society.
In 2020, there were 930,160 reported abortions, reflecting the prevalence of such reproductive healthcare services. Rough estimates predict that 75,000 Americans will undergo unwanted pregnancies next year because they can't get an abortion. Without the constitutional right to abortion, many citizens face overwhelming uncertainty about the resources available in the event of an unplanned pregnancy and how a lack thereof may impact their future. With so much uncertainty, comprehensive and relevant sexual education should be considered as the next option. The way to fight this uncertainty is by fostering confidence, awareness, and understanding of sex, sexuality, gender, relationships, resources, and more. With that, CSE should now prepare the nation's youth to live and navigate through life in an America that's completely different than it was before the overturning of Roe versus Wade on June 24, 2022. Otherwise, without sexual education programs sufficiently considering and accommodating the different set of limitations and choices that cis women, transgender men, and nonbinary individuals face, sexual education - even abstinence-based programs - can't prepare adolescents with the knowledge and support to live their safest and healthiest lives. The relevance, validity, and effectiveness of previous sexual education programs should be seriously considered and analyzed.
Without the constitutional right to an abortion, the risks at hand are far more severe than increased unwanted pregnancies or the impacts doing so may have on one's life. This isn't a matter of convenience or lack thereof; it's a matter of life and death. That being said, appropriate CSE is crucial now and moving forward because, since there's limited to no control for many in an unplanned pregnancy, it's essential to focus on what those citizens still can control: their informed response.