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Teach sex ed built on facts, not dogma

By A Times Editorial
In print: Friday, March 21, 2008

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On some issues the public is ahead of its political leaders. Sex education is one of them. By substantial margins, Floridians favor providing students with information about sexually transmitted disease prevention and contraception rather than just an abstinence-only approach favored by the Bush administration. The Legislature should hear this call and put the health of Florida's teens ahead of a narrow, religiously grounded agenda.

According to a recent St. Petersburg Times poll, of the nine in 10 Florida voters who agree that the public schools should offer some form of sex eduction, only 8 percent said it should be abstinence-only. Even those respondents who described themselves as evangelical Christians generally thought the education program needed to go beyond abstinence.

The poll was taken even before the explosive results of a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were known. That study found at least one in four teenage girls in this country has a sexually transmitted disease. That startling statistic makes it even more imperative that young people receive information that leads to sound and informed decisions about sex.

Although school districts in the state are allowed to teach beyond abstinence-only, Florida receives as much as $10-million annually in federal sex education money to offer abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. The results have been demonstrably counterproductive. Research shows that abstinence-only programs don't work in delaying teen sexual activity or reducing the number of sexual partners. But recently released CDC data found that sex education programs help to keep teens from becoming sexually active before 15 years of age. There also is evidence that such programs reduce the prevalence of unprotected sex.

Abstinence needs to be discussed in any sex education program, but it should be part of a comprehensive, scientifically based and age-appropriate curriculum that gives young people the tools they need to prevent unwanted pregnancy and disease.

Florida has the sixth highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, with nearly 50,000 teens becoming pregnant annually. It is also a leader in new AIDS cases. In the last fiscal year, Florida spent $3.5-million on abstinence-only programs on top of the federal money. Here is an expenditure that deserves scrutiny from lawmakers looking to reduce spending.

Another good step would be passage of the Healthy Teens Act (SB 848, HB 449), which would push school districts to move beyond abstinence-only programs. It would require those public schools that already offer information on pregnancy, family planning or sexually transmitted diseases to include a comprehensive curriculum. For the health and future of Florida's young people, lawmakers should listen to a large majority of their constituents and make this measure a priority.