What should public schools teach our children about sex? It can be a complex question, especially when dealing with morals, social norms, pop culture, hormones and health. When students sit down for their sex education, should teachers embrace an abstinence-only policy?
In an ideal world, each and every young person would have the opportunity to choose to abstain until they decide they are ready. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.
In many African nations and other developing nations, abstinence is not always a choice. Young girls are often forced to trade sex for survival, are married as young as 10 years old, can be inherited as property, have little to no recourse against rape and may not have the luxury of saying no. Evidence also shows that marriage is not a protective factor against HIV infection for women and girls. Trends in current data on new infections suggest that the incidence of HIV is rising among married women and girls worldwide. Therefore it is culturally inappropriate and factually incorrect to posit that giving teens a positive message about the benefits of remaining abstinent until marriage results in more young people with healthy lives.
The data also does not support Uganda as a case study for the success of abstinence-only education. While it is true that the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Uganda declined significantly in the last decades, researchers in the field believe that this decline is largely due to the deaths of previously infected people, not dramatic change in human behavior. Researchers also found that during the period when the HIV/AIDS rate was declining in Uganda , median age of first intercourse actually got lower for both men and women. However, during the same period, condom use in non-marital sex increased substantially.
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