In highly religious cultures throughout the United States, it is a practice in some school districts to only teach abstinence, regarding sexual health and education. While many students in classrooms where this is taught do not remain abstinent, there is still further damage than the students simply not knowing how to properly lubricate a penis when having sex.
We can talk all day about how abstinence is the safest form of not getting an STD as well as not getting pregnant—that is obvious. If a person never engages in a behavior, they are never at risk for any of the horrific incidents that can occur from that behavior; if you never go outside, it is impossible to be hit by a car on the road. However, not educating people about a behavior because a district does not agree with the decisions that those students may make is not the same thing as a person forfeiting any knowledge because they do not agree with a behavior. Preaching abstinence alone, rather than discussing why it is the safest method of contraception as well as protecting from STDs in comparison to other options in detail, is damaging to students.
Not only do students not learn how to have sex properly and run a risk for damages occurring during the sex—such as vaginal micro tears—students are also very unaware of the risks that come with having the sex they were going to have regardless of being taught abstinence. If instructors never teach anything other than abstinence, students will never learn how to protect themselves from diseases. They may never know how to properly put on a condom and may never even know they need to use condoms. They may not know that they need to get HPV shots and go to a doctor to get birth control pills. In addition, there have been cited repercussions of what happens when groups fail to teach anything other than abstinence.
According to they report by Aol, “An ‘abstinence-only’ Texas high school has chlamydia outbreak,” it has been found that a Texas school district that chose not to talk about sexual health outside of abstinence has suffered from a chlamydia outbreak due to the fact that they never even talk about sexual education and therefore inadvertently preach abstinence to their students.
While it is uncommon for these types of situations to occur due to a lack of a sexual education program, or lack of one that is adequate, it is important that the country realizes what happens when you avoid a problem by not talking about it.
Not talking about sex does not make it go away. In fact, approaching a problem in an appropriate and mature manner can cause it to never ensue in the first place. Minors of consenting age engaging in sexual acts with other minors of consenting age is legal; therefore, it is important that school districts assume that these students will have sex, even if it is just one of their students having sex with a student outside of the school district. Even this one student has every right to be taught about their body, sex and their options for having sex safely and not conceiving an unwanted child.
