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Abstinence-Only Sexual Education Essay

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Nowadays, most people’s experience with sexual education in school is sitting in a classroom with about 20 other students, while your gym teacher awkwardly tells you not to have sex before you’re married. The irony is about maybe half of those students have already had sex before and your gym teacher is only teaching you this because the school gets more funding if he does. This key flaw is letting faith-based organizations have a hand in teaching you one of your basic human rights of youth. Abstinence-only sexual education is inefficient and morally flawed due to its aim to promote one specific set of social values, and the group most affected by this is the youth.
A bit of background on the origin of these abstinence only programs. In 1981, …show more content…
If you never teach a teen to properly, use a condom, or the ways STD’s are spread, then that teen probably has a higher chance of having an unwanted pregnancy or catching an STD. In addition, the way these programs promote their message can potentially be harmful as well. Many of these programs use fear and shame to promote chastity (Watkins). They make people who have had premarital sex out to be worthless (Smart). In the case of Elizabeth Smart, she had an encounter where a teacher compared women who have had sex before marriage to chewed-up piece of gum (“Abstinence …show more content…
Results show that Abstinence only education does not reduce but interestingly it increases the teen pregnancy rate (Stranger-Hall). There is a strong correlation between strongly emphasized abstinence education and higher than average teen pregnancy rate (Stranger-Hall). Let me use my own state of Texas as an example. The Lone Star State has the fifth highest teen pregnancy rate and we are 1st in repeat teen pregnancies (Wilkins). That is surprising considering that 58% of our schools teach abstinence only education

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