Gail Helen Bremner

The Cost of Abstinence Education

Posted on August 15th, 2006 by gail helen.
Categories: Relationships, Education, Politics, Feminism, Current Events.

Sex Ed Changes At School With 65 Pregnant Teens - Carolina news station WYFF issued a report today that a Canton, Ohio school board is expanding their sex education program from promoting abstinence to also teaching students who decide to have sex how to do so responsibly, following the revelation that 13% of one high school’s female students were pregnant last year.

“The new Canton school board program promotes abstinence but also will teach students who decide to have sex how to do so responsibly, bringing the city school district’s health curriculum in line with national standards . . . Health textbooks, older than some students, will be replaced . . . The Ohio Department of Education doesn’t require schools to provide sex education, particularly when it comes to using contraceptives. The state curriculum calls for venereal disease education, which often is taught along with nutrition and the effects of drugs, alcohol and tobacco . . . According to the Canton Health Department, statistics through July 2005 showed that 104 of the 586 babies born to Canton residents in Aultman Hospital and Mercy Medical Center had mothers between the ages of 11 and 19.”

Killfile, who seeded this story into Newsvine, states the obvious point: “Teens are going to have sex. They just are. If you tell them to say “no” and don’t prepare them in any other way the end result is going to be high pregnancy rates, high std rates, and high drop out rates. Why is this so hard to understand?”

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