Saturday, September 30, 2006
time to change strategy...on teen pregnancy
Here's an interesting tidbit from Women's E-News Cheers and Jeers of the Week:
Arizona has one of the most restrictive and offensive laws in the nation. ARS 15-716, "Instruction on acquired immune deficiency syndrome; department assistance", spells out what school districts may and may not talk about. This is essentially what the sex education curriculum in Arizona schools may include. While the law does say that instruction should "be medically accurate", "discourage drug abuse", and "dispel myths regarding transmission of" HIV, the law also says instruction must "promote abstinence". Unfortunately, while not necessarily mutually exclusive, "medically accurate" and "promote[s] abstinence" do conflict in the ways current curriculum are currently implemented. And when that happens in Arizona, "medically accurate" generally loses. The "offensive" part of the law comes in paragraph C of the law. You can go to the statute page itself to read what I'm talking about. Needless to say, the philosophy is: if you don't have anything negative to say about LGBT people, say nothing at all.
There are many other problems with this law. That it addresses pregnancy in the context of AIDS education, that it does not address any other sexually transmitted infections, that it is profoundly homophobic, that it does not address sexual consent. According to Arizona education law, sex is something to be stigmatized and problematized. Teachers cannot talk about the healthy and fulfilling aspects of sexual activity. There is so much scientific evidence readily available to support a revision of this law, you have to wonder what's taking us so long to go on the offensive?
There is another statute, ARS 15-711, that mandates that sex education curricula include a component on sexual conduct with a minor for students in grades seven through twelve, which I can assure you is not happening in any substantive way. Sexual conduct with a minor, as defined in ARS 13-1405, is a class 2 felony if the minor is younger than 15 and a class 6 felony if 15 years old or older. Since most teenage girls who become pregnant were impregnated by adult men (usually in their early to mid-twenties), schools could be doing a much better job of teaching their students about sexual conduct with a minor, as they are mandated to do by law. I know this because in just about every classrooms in those grades that I've visited as an anti-sexual violence educator over the past four years, I was the first person to ever talk about age of consent and other related topics. The school districts are not fulfilling the requirements of that particular statute.
The current laws (or their implementation) are clearly failing Arizona's youth. How can they make informed decisions about their own health and well-being when they are receiving only a very limited amount of information from school. Coupled with omnipresent media that provides unhealthy and unrealistic models for gender and sexuality, it's no wonder Arizona's teen pregnancy rate rose exponentially between 1991 and 2004. It's time for a change to our state sex education laws and how they're implemented.
Between 1991 and 2004, Arizona girls gave birth to more than 158,300 children, costing taxpayers $3.7 billion and at least $268 million a year, reported the Tucson Citizen Sept. 26, on data drawn from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. However, during that same period, teen births declined nationally by 23 percent. The state's annual funding for abstinence-until-marriage programs peaked at $4 million.
Arizona has one of the most restrictive and offensive laws in the nation. ARS 15-716, "Instruction on acquired immune deficiency syndrome; department assistance", spells out what school districts may and may not talk about. This is essentially what the sex education curriculum in Arizona schools may include. While the law does say that instruction should "be medically accurate", "discourage drug abuse", and "dispel myths regarding transmission of" HIV, the law also says instruction must "promote abstinence". Unfortunately, while not necessarily mutually exclusive, "medically accurate" and "promote[s] abstinence" do conflict in the ways current curriculum are currently implemented. And when that happens in Arizona, "medically accurate" generally loses. The "offensive" part of the law comes in paragraph C of the law. You can go to the statute page itself to read what I'm talking about. Needless to say, the philosophy is: if you don't have anything negative to say about LGBT people, say nothing at all.
There are many other problems with this law. That it addresses pregnancy in the context of AIDS education, that it does not address any other sexually transmitted infections, that it is profoundly homophobic, that it does not address sexual consent. According to Arizona education law, sex is something to be stigmatized and problematized. Teachers cannot talk about the healthy and fulfilling aspects of sexual activity. There is so much scientific evidence readily available to support a revision of this law, you have to wonder what's taking us so long to go on the offensive?
There is another statute, ARS 15-711, that mandates that sex education curricula include a component on sexual conduct with a minor for students in grades seven through twelve, which I can assure you is not happening in any substantive way. Sexual conduct with a minor, as defined in ARS 13-1405, is a class 2 felony if the minor is younger than 15 and a class 6 felony if 15 years old or older. Since most teenage girls who become pregnant were impregnated by adult men (usually in their early to mid-twenties), schools could be doing a much better job of teaching their students about sexual conduct with a minor, as they are mandated to do by law. I know this because in just about every classrooms in those grades that I've visited as an anti-sexual violence educator over the past four years, I was the first person to ever talk about age of consent and other related topics. The school districts are not fulfilling the requirements of that particular statute.
The current laws (or their implementation) are clearly failing Arizona's youth. How can they make informed decisions about their own health and well-being when they are receiving only a very limited amount of information from school. Coupled with omnipresent media that provides unhealthy and unrealistic models for gender and sexuality, it's no wonder Arizona's teen pregnancy rate rose exponentially between 1991 and 2004. It's time for a change to our state sex education laws and how they're implemented.
