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Comprehensive Sex Education
AdvocacyHow you can help:
Call your local legislator and demand action on Senate Bill 232 / House Bill 338.
Senate Bill 232 / House Bill 338 Sex Ed. Talking Points
What Senate Bill 232 and House Bill 338 will do:
- Require sex education classes to provide students with medically accurate information about abstinence, contraception and condom use as ways to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
Why do we need Honest and Accurate Sexuality Education?
- In 2008, nearly 27,000 Ohio girls between the ages of 10 and 19 became pregnant.
- Twenty-six percent of American girls between the ages of 14 and 19 (32 million teenage girls) are infected with at least one of the most commonly sexually transmitted diseases (STD). The same study also found that nearly half of young African American women (48%) were infected with an STD.
- Seventy-one percent of Ohio voters (81% for voters who have children in school) felt that the best approach to sex education in Ohio’s schools is to focus equally on abstinence as well as the value of condoms and contraceptive use.
- Virginity pledges, one of the common tools used by abstinence educators, have been shown not to be effective. Teens who sign virginity pledges are one-third less likely to use contraception when they do become sexually active, placing them at a higher risk of sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy.
- Teens who have children are much less likely to finish high school and are more likely to be victims of abuse. They are also more likely to receive public assistance. 81% of unmarried women who have children before the age of 20 are on welfare within 10 years.
- Comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education is effective. Multiple peer-reviewed studies have found that comprehensive sexuality education programs that teach teens about abstinence, contraception and disease control are effective at delaying onset of intercourse, reducing the frequency of intercourse, reducing the number of sexual partners, and increasing condom and contraceptive use.
