Comprehensive Sex-Education

As stated by the National Conference of State Legislatures, roughly one in four girls will be pregnant at least once before the age of twenty. That means about twenty five percent of your high school graduating class will become pregnant in high school or college. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2014, the United States teen birth rate was at 249,078. The CDC also states how this statistic is 9% lower than the teen birth rate statistic of 2013. I believe this decline is due to the increase in comprehensive sex-education classes in the United States of America rather than abstinence-based sex-education classes. Although many school systems teach abstinence-based sex-education, comprehensive sex-education is more beneficial to

Sex-education is a very controversial topic; with many parents uncomfortable having teachers speaking to and teaching their children about sex and the ways to protect themselves while performing sexual activity. Because the majority of parents do not want teachers talking to their students about sex and contraceptives, there have been policies put into place in order to stop the teachings of comprehensive sex-education. In America, there is no dedicated federal funding stream for comprehensive sex-education, whereas abstinence-only or abstinence-until-marriage sex education has been allocated over $1.5 billion in state and federal funds

This education needs to start now, before teens begin experimenting with sexual activity, and parents need to understand that talking about sex DOES NOT encourage teens to have sex. According to an article by Liana Clark titled ‘Beyond the birds & the bees: talking to teens about sex’, “teens who have had extensive discussions about sexuality with parents don’t initiate sexual intercourse earlier than do peers with less communicative parents. And when they do embark on an intimate relationship, they are more likely to protect themselves against disease and pregnancy.” Teens that are exposed to comprehensive sex-education earlier, whether it is through parents or through schools, are safer and smarter when it comes to sexual