Speech

English Speech
By Rae Staben

Sex is a gamble. You could get a closer relationship, or contract Chlamydia, HIV or syphilis. Maybe you will get stress relief and pleasure, or maybe an unplanned pregnancy. Obviously, sex has positive and negative consequences. Is there any way to weight the dice in your favor? Well, the answer is yes, but I doubt many high schoolers know about it, and they certainly aren’t taught it in health class. Why? Because in states like Kentucky, abstinence-only education is required. As a result, few people know about contraception and safer sex in order to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections.
Abstinence-only education, the type of sex-ed that all Kentucky teens receive, withholds vital information about self-protection and sexual health by only teaching abstinence. These programs merely tell kids not to have sex, and if contraception is mentioned at all, it is in reference solely to failure rates. Kentucky schools receive government funding to provide abstinence-only-until marriage education. Not only is this ineffective in delivering all the facts to students; it discriminates against same sex-couples. One in ten people identify themselves as LGBTQQI. Their needs should not be denied – if students are taught that abstinence-until-marriage is the only possibility for them, what are these students to do? They can’t marry, so does that mean they will never have sex? Of course not – however, it does mean that most of these young adults will be unprepared to protect themselves from STIs, including HIV/AIDS.
Comprehensive sex education is what students actually need to learn. This includes sexual education that is age-appropriate and medically accurate. But, comprehensive education is not just about showing students how to use a condom. It involves much more than that – healthy relationships, gender, anatomy, sexuality, and safer sex must all be addressed. Some fears about teaching students about contraception are that third-graders will learn how to masturbate, or that teachers will throw condoms at students, saying “Here, take these puppies for a spin.” The truth is that comprehensive education addresses abstinence along with other options for birth control and STI prevention. Of course abstinence will still be presented – clinical abstinence, completely refraining from sexual activity of any kind, is the only 100% effective way to protect oneself! The difference is that comprehensive education provides an all-inclusive view of sexuality and sexual health, without imposing values upon students like abstinence-until-marriage education.
Another worry abstinence-only proponents have is that comprehensive education will increase the number of teens having sex. The overwhelming weight of scientific evidence suggests that addressing abstinence and contraception does not increase sexual activity. A federally-funded evaluation of four carefully selected abstinence-only education programs, published in April 2007, showed that youth enrolled in the programs were no more likely than those not in the programs to delay sexual initiation, to have fewer sexual partners, or to abstain entirely from sex. From this data, one can see that most abstinence programs fail in their sole purpose, promoting abstinence, while decreasing teen’s knowledge and willingness to use contraception.
National promotion of abstinence-only education has cost $1.5 billion, but yielded nothing in return. Abstinence-only education relies on scare tactics to frighten students into abstaining. An all-inclusive approach to sexual education has been shown numerous times to delay sexual initiation, while teaching people who will become sexually active the needed skills and information they need to protect themselves. Although a form of sex education, abstinence-only-until marriage, is provided in Kentucky, there are still 10,610 teen pregnancies a year in the state. Adolescent pregnancy has a variety of social costs. Teen mothers are less likely to complete high school
“[C]hildren born to younger teens may also experience poorer health outcomes, lower educational attainment, and higher rates of adolescent childbearing themselves when compared to children
born to older mothers,” according to the organization known as Advocates for Youth.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 46% of all 15-19 year olds in the United States have had sexual intercourse at least once. That means nearly half of teens are sexually active, but most only receive health information about abstinence. According to Planned Parenthood, only 5% of youth receive the information they need about sex. More than 700,000 teenagers in the United States will become pregnant this year alone, and half of all sexually active people will have a sexually transmitted infection by age 25. Many teens know some about contraception, but not nearly enough to adequately protect themselves. Condoms are 97% effective, but only if used properly. Did you know that condoms can expire, and you shouldn’t carry them in your wallet because the heat makes a condom less effective and it could get a small tear? Did you know the most common symptom of an STI is no symptom? You probably weren’t aware of that – its ok, nobody ever told you. Unfortunately, claiming ignorance doesn’t cure HIV or take care of an unplanned pregnancy.
It is painfully clear that the education students receive now is ineffective, and should be replaced with comprehensive education. I’m not advocating that all teens should have sex – I’m saying that all people should have the information they need to make the decision that is right for them. It is not anyone’s place but your own to make decisions about your sexual health. After all, you are the only one who has to deal with the consequences.