With abortion banned or severely limited in a growing number of states, we’d be wise to zero in on evidence-based strategies for preventing unwanted pregnancies — particularly among teenagers, for whom childbirth and parenthood can present extreme physical, emotional and financial challenges.
Unfortunately, one of the most time-tested, successful pregnancy prevention strategies — comprehensive sex education — remains frustratingly controversial in the United States.
In Indiana, which is moving to ban abortion at all stages of a pregnancy, lawmakers just rejected an amendment that would have broadened sex education in schools to include information about contraceptives, in addition to teaching students about abstinence.
Pardon the metaphor, but abstinence-only sex ed seems about as useful as a driver’s ed instructor who just tells the students not to touch anything — and then warns them not to crash.
Around roughly 40% of teens report having sexual intercourse, according to Centers for Disease Control data. I suppose we can keep pretending not to notice, but then we can also get used to having the highest teen birth rate in the industrialized world.
Or we could ramp up our sex ed offerings.
As of October 2020, 30 states and Washington, D.C., required public schools to teach some form of sex education, according to National Conference of State Legislatures data. Now would be a great time to make that 50 — and to mandate that it be comprehensive, meaning it includes scientifically accurate information about human development, anatomy and reproductive health, as well as information about contraception, childbirth and sexually transmitted infections. (That’s the United Nations Population Fund’s definition.)
Comprehensive sex education has been repeatedly linked to fewer teen pregnancies, lower rates of sexually transmitted infections and delayed initiation of sexual activity.
Earlier this year, researchers from New York University published a study that looked at teen pregnancy rates over a 20-year period, from 1996 to 2016. They found, not surprisingly, that federal funding for comprehensive sex education led to an overall reduction in the teen birth rate.
Countries where comprehensive sex education is standard — Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands — have significantly lower teen birth rates rates than the United States, despite data showing that teenagers in those nations have their first sexual encounters, on average, at roughly the same age as American teenagers.
So if we’re not focusing on what works, what are we focusing on?
Bonnie J. Rough writes brilliantly on this topic in “Beyond Birds and Bees: Bringing Home a New Message to Our Kids about Sex, Love, and Equality,” her book about living with her family temporarily in the Netherlands and learning to examine everything she’d been taught (or not) about sex.
“Not every society treats bodies as shameful and sex as offensive,” Rough writes. “I saw that many of my international friends were raising kids far more likely to have optimal sexual health and self-esteem, better sex lives and more advantages of gender equality than their average American peers. I’d gone to see how they accomplished this, and most of all, while my kids were still little, to find out if I could reinvent my own philosophy about sex, clarify my guiding principles and discover approaches more practical and more effective than the old-fashioned birds-and-bees checklist.”
In the United States, Rough writes, we’ve co-mingled sexual awareness with a loss of innocence — and therefore something to be avoided.
“Sex education over the past half century has gained a sinister reputation,” she writes. “It is nothing less than the elimination of childhood, an irreversible darkening of the soul. If a child who learns about sex can no longer be called a child, of course we’ll want to guard them from that knowledge.”
But that’s a peculiarly American hang-up, she learned, from her time living in the Netherlands and the five years she spent researching sex education after she returned to the United States.
After living in the Netherlands, she writes, she stopped viewing sex ed as a safety net or a backup plan and started viewing it as a unique opportunity.
“A school sits squarely on the front lines when it comes to equipping children for healthy, happy, secure futures with body autonomy and balanced relationships,” Rough writes.
And she stopped living in fear of teen sex.
“I no longer fixate on the question of how long my children will wait before their first sexual experiences,” Rough writes. “Instead I think it’s more important to consider how positive, healthy and gainful those first experiences can be.”
That means, she writes, talking to her daughters about birth control, the risks of intoxicated sex, pornography and other leave-your-comfort-zone topics.
“Knowing what I didn’t want had been easy all along,” Rough writes, “But now I knew what I did want for my children in their sexual lives. In their bodies, I wanted them to have health, safety and reproductive control, of course, but also sovereignty, confidence, desire and pleasure. In their relationships, I wanted them to enjoy harmony, affection, trust, equality and authentic love. In their wider lives as adults, I hoped they would know their full worth, meet their deepest potential and contribute to society in ways that would fulfill them.”
Now would be a great time to use that as our North Star.
