Same goes for the several friends who have gone through the same thing.

Mostly we were a little sad and a lot relieved, because it is not fair to bring unwanted children into this world…

Years ago I had the pleasure of listening to an exchange between Gen Chris Vokes and the Airborne School Chaplains. The holy ones were arguing for better recreational facilities on base, “…to keep the lads in barracks on weekends instead of going off to cavort with a certain class of women in the city”. The General heard them out and then declared, “Gentlemen, you may have your ping pong tables, and whatever but please don’t think there is anything you can do that will make fucking unpopular…”
Plus ca change…

But I do think that it’s criminal to give people false information (as also in the abortion-breast cancer link which the only proper study with Danish data disproved conclusively), and it’s very cruel not to give teens the information that could save their lives.

Besides, anything the schools preach the students will go against, if my teenage years are any guide more generally, so preaching abstinence could have the very opposite effect from the intended one.

:-)

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 12% of American women in general are affected by a depressive disorder each year, and 9.5% of the general population suffers from clinical depression.

And thanks, Tom T., for the tip on the italics tag. It should be closed now.

A few years ago I met a high-school teacher who ranted to me that she was not permitted to recommend abstinence in her sex-education classes. I doubted this, and expect what she meant is that she wasn’t allowed to propagandize on the subject, because she went on to say that abstinence was the only 100% effective way of preventing STDs.

“It’s not 100% effective,” I said. “You could be raped.” Fortunately she didn’t reply that rape victims were asking for it and therefore weren’t practicing abstinence; instead she quibbled and said that not having voluntary sex was the only 100% effective way of not getting STDs through voluntary sex. But that’s tautological, isn’t it?

It’s like saying, “Don’t worry about seat belts or their safety record; just don’t get into a car. Not riding in a car is the only 100% effective way of not being killed in an auto accident.” (whisper: bystanders are often killed in auto accidents) “Er, I mean that not riding in a car is the only 100% effective way of not being killed in an auto accident when you’re riding in a car.”

What I would like to see is more education on how oral sex can transmit disease, because from the antecdotal evidence I’ve heard from current teens, that seems to be the fashion now (get/give a blowjob, don’t get pregnant).

But what I’m left wondering is… do all US highschools have some sort of frantic, mind-numbing insanity problem, permeating the teachers and students and school board? Even in conservative, Roman Catholic Canada, we got a pretty basic, honest and forthright sexual education, starting in grade 5 and continuing until highschool graduation.

You would think the Roman Catholic contingent would be the most rabid, least honest of the campaigns against sex. Apparently this is not so.

I don’t know if it’s online in an English version, but a recent large Danish study showed that there were no correlation between depressions/suicides and abortions. When I say recent, I’m talking within the last two months - or at least Danish newspapers wrote about it within the last two months.

It made me angry that those fundies used to women, convinced them that the abortion caused their problems, and continued to use them as political fodder.

Even worse — some of them brought their new infants along as props.

It’s just natural for women who had abortions to suffer from terrible, mind-breaking depression. There’s nothing that can hurt a woman more than an abortion.

Keep up the sex.

The girls in my crowd thankfully knew of and went to the local planned parenthood. Many of the girls I went to school with never visited a gynecologist during high school unless something were medically out of whack.

I’m a strong believer in preventative medicine, including having the proper information to prevent medical maladies, regarding sexual health this includes everything from how to identify a yeast infection to how to prevent an unplanned pregnancy. When a boy I grew up with lost a testicle for being afraid to mention to his parents a long-term pain he was having, that pretty much made up my mind. We were fourteen.

Lying in sexual education classes, barring women from necessary medical procedures, punishing those people who most need support, and ostracizing those who are most in pain.

Canadians may not understand that we don’t really have many real conservatives in America. We instead have radical regressives, who seek to go back to a point in the past avoid progressive “mistakes” rather than conservatives who wish to be slow and sure about progressive change.

American religious radical regressives want to go back to before feminism, some before suffrage, some back to the dark ages. They want a fantasy land where women are to be dutiful, abstinent outside of marriage (and not enjoying sexual duties during), and submissive, and everyone will be pious (not spiritual) out of fear of God, with a benevolent theocracy policing morality, just in case of the unenlightened.

When someone feels that any action is justified, they do unjustifiable things (in this case in the name of God). However, when someone has a no holds barred pursuit of an impossibility, they are hugely destructive to no end. This is why America seems so insane to foreigners. It’s not just religious radical regressives either. We’ve got economic as well.

In many public highschoos, i would say yes. I’ve seen the effects of public education have on teenagers and it ain’t pretty. I’d almost swear some of them came out dumber than they were when they went in. As for private schools, it varies. I went to a rather conservative private school in VA but in the 6th grade we had a liberal sex ed class that covered everythign from the stats for various prophalactics to the old put-the-rubber-on-the-banana lesson. While this class was not mandatory, not a single student’s parent opted to have their child excluded. Perhaps this was because something like 60% of the student’s parents were doctors, but that’s just a guess.

I’d almost swear some of them came out dumber than they were when they went in.

I’ll counter Keith here because I’m a public school teacher in training and a huge advocate of the PS system.

The problem isn’t what the teachers and school boards want, it’s what the parents want. It’s been a long known fact among teachers that many elected spots on the school board (especially in the midwest) are seated with or pursued by evangelical Christians who advocate for the eradication of comprehensive sex education. It doesn’t help that a certain evangelical Christian in a certain high office has maintained a lack of funding for any school who doesn’t teach abstinence education as the main form of sex education.

Furthermore, you take underfunded school systems constantly threatened with lawsuits… The threat of a the loss of money for these schools, hell most schools, is frightening. There have been schools in my area that have been forced to close their doors thanks to underfunding and lawsuits over curriculum, and one is even being sued by a superintendent who caused one school system, the best public school in the state, a gigantic loss of funding due to her economic mismanagement.

People are voting against taxes that fund schools, bills that support schools, bills that pay teachers, proposals that would help to build new schools and relieve pressure on overpopulated and underfunded schools, and everyone wonders why public schools are in a difficult position trying to decide what and how to teach. At the same time that people resent paying taxes that fund these schools, they lament the loss of music, art, and sports programs. Hard to run these programs without money, eh?

President Bush’s NCLB is another post altogether, but we are leaving kids in the dust by denying them information to make good decisions about their sexual behavior. Abstinence education is even being seen as the violation of the first amendment. http://www.ncac.org/cen_news/cn80sexeducation.html

Specifically, under the new provisions of NCLB,
“Funds cannot be used for condom or other contraceptive distribution, obscene materials, promotion of sexual activities, or for sex education in schools that is not age- appropriate and does not emphasize abstinence.”
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/nclbreference/page_pg65.html?exp=0
Scroll way down to the bottom of the page.

Another states:
“(a) PROHIBITION- None of the funds authorized under this Act shall be used —

(1) to develop or distribute materials, or operate programs or courses of instruction directed at youth, that are designed to promote or encourage sexual activity, whether homosexual or heterosexual;

(2) to distribute or to aid in the distribution by any organization of legally obscene materials to minors on school grounds;

(3) to provide sex education or HIV-prevention education in schools unless that instruction is age appropriate and includes the health benefits of abstinence; or

(4) to operate a program of contraceptive distribution in schools.”
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg112.html?exp=0

Althought it outlines the concerns very clearly, no terms within these concerns are defined. What is age-appropriate? What is obscene? What is promotion of sexual activity and what is not?

No wonder the confusion.

The funny thing is that although many think public schools are in a crisis, a “crisis” that crops up every decade for the last 100 years (read your PS history - it’s fascinating), very few report that it is happening in their area and that the public schools their kids go to are doing just fine.

If anyone is interested in a reading list on the state of public schools, students, and teachers, I’ll gladly compile a list. I’m drowning in educational material.