Issues@Hand

AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs

July-August 2016 – The Obama administration’s federal sex ed program, which emphasizes contraceptive use rather than abstinence, is being taught to fewer students than it was three years ago. Guttmacher Institute examined data from 2011 to 2013 and compared it to a previous study from 2006 to 2010. As of 2013, the percentage of girls who had been taught about birth control dropped from 70% to 60%, and the percentage of boys dropped from 61% to 55%. At the same time, it is reported that “the proportion of adolescents talking with their parents about sex education topics did not change significantly,” indicating that the reduction in teaching those subjects has taken place in schools.

Valerie Huber of Ascend said that schools are increasingly teaching abstinence despite the federal push for comprehensive sex ed. “Parents want the dominant message to be how to wait for sex – not how to have sex and use contraception. And those are two very different messages,” she said.

onenewsnow.com, 5/16/16; educationnews.org, 4/22/16