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Supporting safe sex education

SAFE SEX? Or save sex? Which message should schools' sex education programs teach kids today? Although it's a personal and passion-filled issue, activists and politicians are getting the final say on classroom curricula. And by advocating abstinence-only sex education, they're not choosing wisely. These kinds of programs deny students valuable information that they need for effective decision-making, ultimately endangering those they seek to protect.

Presidential candidate George W. Bush is a gung-ho abstinence activist -- as governor of Texas he already has spent $6 million on abstinence programs. He wants $135 million more in federal funding for the expansion of these programs. It sounds like a good plan -- until you consider that there certainly will be strings attached.

Two years ago, a national welfare-reform bill allocated $50 million for states to spend teaching kids abstinence. In 48 states, over 700 schools have grabbed the funds, but there's a catch: Those schools must teach students "the harmful psychological and physical effects" of premarital sex. Five states have thrown themselves full-force on the sex-free bandwagon, mandating abstinence-only programs in their schools.

What exactly are these harmful effects? The legislation doesn't say. It also fails to mention that there is little evidence that teaching abstinence is effective in preventing kids from having intercourse.

Abstinence-only education isn't going to help the girls in the class who are already pregnant. It's not going to affect the couple that already enjoys having sex. It will be tough for the program to change the morals of students that don't believe that there's something wrong with having sex before marriage. So the harmful effects may come not from pre-marital sex but from these new abstinence-aimed programs themselves, because they ignore the simple fact that lots of kids will, and do, have sex before they're married.

Presenting abstinence as the safest option is important. Presenting it as the only option is unrealistic. By the age of 20, 80 percent of males and 74 percent of females have had sexual intercourse (Alan Guttmacher Institute, "Sex and America's Teenagers," 1994). A study of 7,326 seventh and eighth graders in California who participated in an abstinence-only program found that the program didn't have any measurable impact on their sexual behaviors (H. H. Cagampang, R. P. Barth, M. Korpi and D. Kirby, "Education Now and Babies Later [ENABL]: Life History of a Campaign to Postpone Sexual Involvement," "Family Planning Perspectives," 29, no. 3 1997). From these studies, it's safe to say that pre-marital sex won't be eliminated -- or probably even be reduced significantly -- by only teaching abstinence. What could happen, however, is that sexually-active students won't learn enough in school about having safe sex.

In five states they aren't learning anything. And nothing certainly is not enough. The National Institute of Health's Consensus Panel on AIDS said that the abstinence-only approach to sex education "places policy in direct conflict with science and ignores overwhelming evidence that other programs are effective."

If students are going to be sexually active -- and again, some are -- then they should at least be safe when they engage in sexual activity. But they can only be safe if they've learned how. Studies show that only 3 percent of parents educate their kids about sex. That means kids have to get their information elsewhere or they won't get it at all. It's far better for sex education in school to teach kids the facts than to let them rely on less credible sources like rumors from friends.

In a 1996 Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 47 percent of teens said they need more information on how to prevent AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. But with the trend toward only teaching kids to "just say no" to sex, they're less likely to find the information they need.

Keeping kids healthy needs to be a central goal of schools' sex education curricula. The point of these programs should be to educate students, not dictate to them how to live their lives. They need to be informed of their options, taught about condoms, birth control, HIV and AIDS, other STDs and pregnancy. The more kids know, the more informed their decisions will be. There isn't evidence that teaching about safe sex leads to more sex -- but there is evidence that it leads to protected sex.

Gov. Bush and other abstinence-only advocates think they know what's best: saving sex for marriage. And they seek to impose that belief on everyone else. In the process, they could deny students invaluable, even life-saving information.

We're in a country that prides itself on protecting freedom and supporting individual thought. We see education as the path to success, and ignorance is sought out and destroyed. But abstinence-only education narrows horizons that are desperately in need of broadening. It ignores reality, favoring an impossible world where everyone who's single is sex-free. Condemning teens' sexual activities won't make them go away, so they must be addressed in an open and practical manner.

Only sex education that incorporates information on both abstinence and safe sexual practices can keep kids healthy. Safe sex or save sex? The answer is to teach kids about all their options, and then let them choose.

Jennifer Schaum is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.

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