First, the General Assembly required school districts to favor “abstinence-only” programs, a discredited approach that seeks only to persuade kids not to have sex until marriage. Districts that wanted to offer some frank talk — or share much practical information — about how to avoid pregnancy when sexually active found state law discouraging.
Compounding the problem, lawmakers blocked educators from establishing health education standards without legislative approval. The lawmakers were trying to assure that abstinence-only programs dominated.
Without standards, what resulted was wide variability in what kids are taught. Not enough districts have the courage to offer comprehensive sex education, that is, programs that talk about the value of abstinence while also describing methods of birth control and ways to avoid disease.
Now districts frequently rely on programs run by partisans in the sex education wars. Some hire church-affiliated groups to give pro-abstinence messages. Some would not dream of allowing other outside groups that would emphasize only birth control and other precautions.
Both approaches are foolish unless accompanied by complete, accurate, practical information that kids will need to navigate the increasingly complicated and confusing decisions that come with maturing to adulthood.
Everyone should be able to agree upon the goal of making abortion less frequent, less common and less in demand. Abstinence-only programs reach only some of the young people it's necessary to reach toward that goal.
Two Democrats from Northwest Ohio, backed by 31 women's groups and health organizations, said last week they will introduce a bill in the General Assembly they hoped will cut the number of unintended pregnancies in the state. They propose:
- Sex education that covers contraception, condoms, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS, in addition to abstinence.
- Access to emergency contraceptives in all hospital emergency rooms for rape victims.
- Mandated coverage of contraceptives by insurance plans that cover other prescription drugs.
Plenty of that will be controversial. The plan needs to be debated. But the core concepts make sense. Ohio should be doing more to combat unwanted pregnancy.
There's also a federal role. Under President George W. Bush, the federal government would just fund abstinence-only sex education. Under Gov. Ted Strickland, Ohio opted out of taking those federal sex education funds due to the restrictions.
During the abstinence-only push by the Bush administration, decade-long trends that saw sexual activity by high school students going down and condom use by teens going up both came to a halt. That's probably not a coincidence.
Abstinence-only programs failed to give kids information they needed and also failed to convince kids that abstinence is the best choice.
Abstinence certainly works when kids adhere to it. Unfortunately, statistics show that very few delay sex until marriage.
Young people come in many varieties. All need information to make choices that will avoid life-altering mistakes.
By not giving kids that information, Ohio schools contribute to their troubles and to social problems in their communities.
