Sex Education
The United States has unacceptably high rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and HIV/AIDS infections. To address this challenge, NARAL Pro-Choice California supports honest, age-appropriate, and medically accurate sex education that promotes abstinence and provides young people with the information they need to protect themselves. California has always been a leader in reducing teen pregnancy and STIs. In 2004, California passed SB 71, which requires all California public schools who teach sex education to teach medically accurate, age-appropriate sex education. Since then our teen birth rate has declined by 40%. To ensure that your school complies with this law, please download our Sex Ed Toolkit. Research shows that honest, medically accurate sex education works. "Abstinence-only" programs aren’t proven effective, and some studies even show that young people who go through these programs are less likely to use contraception and protect themselves when they become sexually active. Making matters worse, many of these "abstinence-only" programs include blatantly false and inaccurate information. Young people deserve better than this – and so do taxpayers. There is also overwhelming public support for honest sex education: the vast majority of Californians (78%) prefer sex education programs that teach children about obtaining and using contraceptives. Most say sex education in schools is effective in helping teens avoid pregnancy (62%) and sexually transmitted diseases (71%).
|
| |
