For a state so opposed to abortion, Alabama allows too many unwanted teen pregnancies to occur.
Alabama’s sexual education program doesn’t do its job, and so we believe it needs to be reformed.
Specifically, we believe emphasis should be moved from abstinence to contraception.
Alabama Code Title 16. Education § 16-40A-2 states there should be “(1) An emphasis on sexual abstinence as the only completely reliable method of avoiding unwanted teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.”
According to a study published by the The National Center for Biotechnology Information, there’s a positive correlation between emphasis on abstinence-only sex ed and teen birth rates — even when other factors such as household income, religiosity, ethnic composition and use of Medicaid waivers are considered.
This shouldn’t be a great surprise considering the nature of sex — namely, how we generally crave it and won’t stop having it even if we’re told we shouldn’t.
Instead of the sexless utopia our legislators imagine for the unwedded, people continue to have sex.
Only, without being properly instructed as to how to have safe sex, people end up having unsafe sex.
Our sex ed is too focused on maintaining an interpretation of Christian sexual morality that leads to greater hardship for people.
Instead, we should implore our government to opt for goals-oriented policy.
That way, on top of telling ourselves we did a good thing, we can point to something more tangible: there being
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