COLUMN: Comprehensive sexual education
Would you rather kids were sharing facts or herpes? Although oversimplistic, this question demonstrates the general reason that comprehensive sex education would be the smart thing to do for the high school students of this country. The policy of the state of Utah and the overarching national policy is to teach abstinence-only sex education. I would argue that this leads to a lack of understanding of exactly what options people have in terms of their reproductive health and leads to teenagers exchanging stupid rumors and accepting them as facts.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not recommending that all 16-year-olds should go out and have sex. In fact, I would guess that the overwhelming majority do not possess the maturity level to engage in a relationship with that level of seriousness. It does occur, however, and no teenager should be faced with dealing with the choices that come with unplanned pregnancy or staring down a life of handling an STI because they were ill-equipped when they made the decision to have sex.
Some would contend that teaching forms of sex education that go beyond “don’t touch each other, or you will get pregnant and die,” would lead to more teenagers engaging in sexual activity, but studies have shown that, relatively speaking, it doesn’t make anywhere near as much of an impact as parents filling their role by having a frank and honest discussion with their children about sexual behavior. Unfortunately, many parents do not take an active role in their children’s education. It then becomes only reasonable that the public education system take responsibility for the awareness and resultant health of their students.
A cause for concern about teenagers engaging in sexual activities without real information is that in the past year over half of the nation’s high school students reported being sexually active in an anonymous survey. In a statistic like that there are bound to be people who didn’t have all the facts and made some ill-informed decisions after having not been fully clued in. A study of those same teens says that 17 percent of them rely entirely on the “rhythm method,” which has been shown to result in pregnancy 25 percent of the time.
While it is true that the teen pregnancy rate dropped considerably from the ‘90s and continued to decline up until 2005, it began rising again in 2006, we as a country have the highest teen pregnancy rate of any western industrialized nation by a long shot. The average age of teens beginning to engage in sexual behavior is the same in Europe and the U.S. – 17 – but because U.S. teens do not use birth control as often, our pregnancy rate is three times higher. Our abortion rate is double to triple that of Europe’s.
Three out of 10 girls in the U.S. will have had their first child by the age of 18; 40 percent of these girls will not complete high school and many of those will go on to become reliant, at least partially, on welfare and state support for themselves and their child. If one were arguing for a reform of the welfare system, this issue would be one of the first things that a reasonable person would look into.
Another example of the prevalence of teen pregnancy in the U.S. is the fact that we actually have two full reality television series devoted solely to following around teenage girls who have gotten pregnant. “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” are serious examples of the fact that we as a country are failing to inform our teenage population and that for some reason we have developed some terrifying fascination with the results of others’ poor judgment.
Some of the myths that have been spread about methods of birth control include a suspicion that condoms are not effective. This is simply untrue. Condoms are 98 percent effective in the prevention of pregnancy and STI transmission. Seventy percent of the nation’s high schools are expressly forbidden from distributing them in any way, shape or form and most are actually not even supposed to mention their existence. An example of kids believing ridiculous things was showcased when five members of a high school swim team in North Carolina all managed to impregnate their girlfriends. When asked why they chose not to use condoms they said they thought that all their exposure to chlorine had rendered them sterile … ya kids, chlorine would kill sperm if it were outside of your ridiculous hormone-driven bodies. Stories like this show up all over the place and will continue to, until students are armed with all the facts.
In Utah the statistics are slightly lower due to the fact that the average is swayed by the number of Utah teens that choose abstinence, but the number of people who are woefully ignorant about their sexual health is higher. When your peers are your first line for information because you personally have no idea what you’re up to even on your wedding night, you know something is lacking in your awareness of a subject.
I would assert that giving kids the information on what would keep them safe would in the end benefit them and, in turn, society as a whole. The gap in knowledge should not come into play when something is a biological urge that all humans have. While it may not be wise to give in to it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, and not knowing how to be safe and healthy in the end hurts everyone.
Anna Harris is a junior majoring in political science. She can be reached at anna.j.harris@aggiemail.usu.edu