Encouraging Comprehensive Sex Education

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Recommended: The need for a comprehensive sexual education

Encourage Comprehensive Sex Education Comprehensive sex education is the most realistic way of teaching sex education today. While remaining abstinent is the only way to be one-hundred percent sure one will not have an unwanted pregnancy or contract a Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD), it is unrealistic in today’s society. Teenagers, as well as adults, are engaging in premarital sexual activity. STDs can be a serious or life-threatening disease. Effective comprehensive sex education should contain information detailing sexual development and reproduction, methods of birth control, STDs and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), abortion, and the different religious and cultural views on sex and sexual diversity. With this information, young people are better equipped to make choices regarding their sexual behavior. The debate is not whether one agrees or disagrees with premarital sex. The debate is whether one is educated enough in helping reduce the spread of unwanted pregnancies and STDs by knowing how to correctly use contraception. The way of teaching sex education has been controversial for quite sometime. Beginning in 1981 under the Regan Administration, federal funding had been directed to sex education programs that promoted abstinence-only-until-marriage, and excluded any other approaches to sex education (Caplan). This approach has been controversial as the public supports sex education programs to include not only abstinence, but information on contraceptives as well (Caplan). More than seventy percent of young women and eighty percent of young men approve of premarital sex (Caplan). Abstinence will not work against protecting individuals if they want to have sex. Young Americans want to be sexually active,... ... middle of paper ... ...es S. “ Marriage and Divorce.” CQ Researcher 10 May 1996: 409-32. Web. 31 July 2011 Clemmitt, Marcia. “Teen Pregnancy.” CQ Researcher 26 March 2010: 265-88. Web. 31 July 2011. Elliott, Emma. "Abstinence Sex Education Reduces Teen Sexual Activity." Teens at Risk. Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 31 July 2011. Friedman, Jane. “Teen Sex.” CQ Researcher 16 Sept. 2005: 761-84. Web. 31 July 2011. Glazer, Sarah. “Sexually Transmitted Diseases.” CQ Researcher 3 Dec. 2004: 997-1020. Web. 31 July 2011. Glazer, Sarah. “Future of feminism.” CQ Researcher 14 April 2006: 313-36. Web. 31 July 2011. Jost, Kenneth. “Foster care crisis.” CQ Researcher 27 Sept. 1991: 705-278. Web. 31 July 2011. Price, Tom. “Child welfare reform.” CQ Researcher 22 April 2005: 345-68. Web. 31 July 2011.

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