Why We Need Sex Ed

Until 2009, the United States government's official statement to the youth of America was "Abstinence is the only surefire way to avoid getting pregnant" (Melby). For the first time since the early 1990's, this is changing. The government has stopped pushing through funding for abstinence-only curricula in favor of programs designed to combat teenage pregnancy. While some groups call for more, it is certainly a start. Despite the fact that the numbers have dropped in the past few years, teenage pregnancy rates in the United States are higher than any other developed nation in the world (Guttmacher). These new programs, often referred to as "abstinence-plus," still preach abstinence as they best option but also include ways to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). This topic is complicated by moral, ethical, and religious viewpoints. Woven into our society, sex is everywhere. It can be found in the various forms of media, music and entertainment, and our very culture. Parents send mixed messages to their children in an attempt to balance their children's interest with what they want them to know. However, no matter how personal sex may be, sexual education is not. What to teach this generation of children, who have more individual freedoms than any other before them, is being fought out in public schools, paid for with public dollars (Kelly). Regardless of which position a person supports, no one is wrong; a compromise over how much information to give and when to give it just needs to be found. Comprehensive sexual education is a necessary to ultimately reduce U.S. teenage pregnancy rates and to protect the health and well-being of this countries children, when and if they succumb to natural urges.