Set them up for failure': Sex education not required in many states where abortion will be banned

[CousinIT]

https://news.yahoo.com/set-them-failure-sex-education-103009416.html

Close to half of the roughly two dozen states where abortion is or will soon be outlawed or heavily restricted do not require sex education.

Most of those states require any schools that do choose to teach sex education to emphasize abstinence as the main or only way to avoid getting pregnant. Almost none require teaching about contraception.

In contrast, in states with broader access to abortion, nearly all require sex education. Still, sex education tends to be limited even in those states, with many stressing an abstinence-only approach or making lessons on topics such as contraception and relationships optional.

“Very few young people in the U.S. get outstanding sex education,” said Leslie Kantor, a professor and sex education expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “To leave young people without information about birth control suddenly in this context, where they cannot legally get an abortion in half the states – that is an incredible human rights violation.”

[Pete Ross Junior]

1. In general, the same people who are opposed to abortion ...

... are also opposed to sex education in public schools.

It's all part of the same complex.

A very terrible thing, but entirely expected.

[SharonAnn]

2. They are extremely focused on "pelvic issues".

[RockRaven]

3. Antiabortionism is not *just* misogyny or wacky religious crap. It's also class warfare.

The elites want the masses to be constantly financially desperate. To be afraid to demand better from their employers. To be so exhausted just surviving as to be civically disengaged. What better way to effectuate that than unplanned/unwanted parenthood? That's why these otherwise impious rich pricks make common cause with religious wackadoodles and pursue abortion bans and destroying public education.

[love_katz]

5. This. Exactly.

Also, they want more cannon fodder for their wars. Neither they nor their children will have to go to some battle field to fight. They will get excused for some condition like bone spurs.

[Pete Ross Junior]

7. +1 ! n/t

[leftieNanner]

4. My Daughters' Health Class Textbook

was published in Texas. I searched the index for the word "condom". Not in there. Birth control? Nope. The only thing in the entire book was abstinence.

Fortunately, we lived in California, and the instructor did provide more information. I had already had the physiology talk with them.

But so many young people who don't learn how all those parts work will end up pregnant with nowhere to turn.

I believed in giving my daughters ownership of their own sexuality because when that boy is pressuring them to go farther, neither Jesus nor I will be there to counsel them.

[hunter]

6. I usually write "realistic sex education" as opposed to the most common sort here in the U.S.A..

Children need to know all about sex *before* it occurs to them that it might be fun, including the fact that they might consider it fun someday.

They also need to have some awareness that sexual predators exist.

We teach kids how to avoid getting run over by cars, and later we teach them how to safely drive cars. Sex isn't any different.

I'm a lucky kid. Once I started to care about sex there weren't any surprises. It's not a subject that's taboo with my parents.

Not just "straight" sex either. My parents have always had LGBTQ friends so those discussions weren't off the table either. (Sadly we had to be taught what we saw at home, minor public displays of affection and such between same sex couples, had to stay at home.)

My parents are artists with day jobs who met working in Hollywood, if that's any explanation.

Of course this made our house "off limits" to some of the neighborhood kids whose parents didn't want them to know anything about sex, which made those the kids most likely to get in trouble, and most likely to end up at our house seeking the advice of my mom, the neighborhood auntie.

My grandparents respected the privacy of gay family, friends, and coworkers, although my most conservative grandfather considered homosexuality a "disorder," but not to the extent of depriving anyone their basic human rights. He was "don't ask, don't tell" military forty years ahead of his time. During World War II he was the handsome officer with a big black car and enlisted driver carrying a get out of jail free card for various misfits deemed essential to the war effort. He NEVER talked about that, I heard it from my grandmother and her sister who worked for the USO in their support of the war effort.

Realistic sex education is a hard sell wherever you go in the U.S.A, even in the "liberal" states. When I was teacher our no-nonsense health teacher faced a fairly constant barrage of opposition from parents who had taught their children to tattle about anything they heard beyond "abstinence only." The shit I got from some parents for simply teaching science was nothing compared to that.