Abstinence-Only Sex Education In Schools

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“Each year, U.S. teens experience as many as 850,000 pregnancies, and youth under age 25 experience about 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs)” (McKeon). These shocking statistics are conspicuous to any ordinary American, yet the United States schools have taken little initiative to teach effective sexual education. Sex education programs in the U.S. mainly fall under two categories – comprehensive or abstinence-only. Abstinence-only sex education programs present abstinence as the only effective means to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexual transmitted diseases and infections; whereas comprehensive sex education programs teach abstinence as a secondary choice, while also informing students about birth control and contraceptives. Comprehensive sex education should be the only sex education method taught in schools because it is the most effective technique to keep students well-informed, prepared, and safe.
Multiple groups across the United Stated advocate for abstinence-only sexual education including: “Concerned Women for America, the Eagle Forum, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation, the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, the National Coalition for Abstinence education, and STOP Planned Parenthood International” (Collins). These groups principally argue that involvement in sexual activities before marriage “is inappropriate or immoral and that abstinence is the only method which is [a hundred percent] effective in preventing pregnancy or STIs” (Collins). Such groups emphasize that all contraception techniques have a risk of failure and believe that comprehensive sex education programs provide misleading information that safe sex techniques provide “foolproof pregnancy and d...

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...firm that effective sexual education is imperative to the American society as “rates of sexually transmitted disease (STD), teen pregnancy, and teen births are higher in the [U.S.] than in most other industrialized countries” (Kohler). In the contemporary society of America, the involvement of young adolescents in sexual relationships is a reality that cannot be denied and no school-based intervention can undo the pressure of media and natural hormonal urges that adolescents experience; but at least through an effective comprehensive-based sexual education teenagers can be provided with accurate medical and health information about prevention methods for teenage pregnancy, STDs and STIs, and HIV. Engaging in sexual behaviors is a personal decision and teenagers need to have accurate information about sexual self-protection so that they can be well-prepared and safe.

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