Florida knows more about the pitfalls of unsafe sex than most any other state.

The state ranked third from the top in the number of teen births per state in 2006. It had more abortions than 42 of 44 other states reporting data in 2005, and it had more cumulative AIDS cases than 47 other states in 2007.

These U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers and oodles of other data are being used to justify a state bill that has been reintroduced this year after failing to get a hearing last year. “The Florida Healthy Teens Act” would change the way Collier and Lee County School District students are taught sex education.

It won’t just be abstinence anymore.

“What the bill provides is that the education start with the clear statement that the only way to prevent pregnancy and disease is to abstain. That absolutely should be our goal,” said the bill’s main sponsor in the senate, state Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Delray Beach. “But what we can’t do, is to expect that if we keep repeating it over and over that every student is going to abstain.”

As such, the bill mandates schools which teach sex education give their students all the facts. The schools can use the word marriage. However, teachers must also acknowledge those children who are not raised to believe in marriage, or who would be unable to get married due to state and federal laws preventing them from doing so.

The bill would also require students be taught the health benefits and side effects of condoms and birth control, and teach them about puberty, interpersonal skills, goal-setting, decision-making, drugs, alcohol and sexually transmitted infections. The subjects must be taught age-appropriate levels on or after the sixth grade, and parents who feel the subjects aren’t being taught according to the law will have a specific set of grievances leading all the way to the state education commissioner.

Supporters of the bill say it will cut the $1.5 million annual cost of matching federal funding for “wait until marriage” programs, which they say have been ineffective in preventing abortions and unwanted pregnancies. The bill has received some bi-partisan support, and is also supported by dozens of religious groups, medical organizations and human rights groups, among them Planned Parenthood of Collier County.

Kim Slote, Planned Parenthood of Collier County’s director of education and advocacy, mentioned several studies that found abstinence-only programs were ineffective.

“Comprehensive sex education does work,” Slote said. “We’re really just following the science here and hoping that our legislature will do the same.”

Critics of the bill say abstinence only, “wait until marriage” education is the most successful and the only method for preventing pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted infections.

“The healthiest choice certainly is to teach about abstinence,” said Joe Hennessy, president of Naples Pro Life Council. “Teaching different forms of sex education — using condoms, other variations — leads to very serious consequences. We also think the reporting in terms of studies hasn’t been fair. Certainly, abstinence, once it’s tried, certainly works.”

Naples resident Kathleen Sullivan has been on the front lines of sex education for years. In 1985, she founded Project Reality, a federally-funded non-profit organization that provided sex education courses to public schools in Illinois. She later moved it to Florida and it eventually merged into another group, which she said was due to a move by legislators towards health clinics in schools.

Though the bill does not in any way mention or encourage the establishment of health clinics in schools and is aimed entirely at establishing a standardized curriculum for schools teaching sex education, Sullivan is convinced the bill will cater to big businesses looking to supply sexual health services to otherwise healthy teens.

“Schools are having a hard enough time doing what they are supposed to do. That is, basic education,” Sullivan said. “They are not equipped to run medical institutions. Should any move be made to combine health services, county health services any type of health services there will be chaos.”

Sullivan’s organization distributed A.C. Green’s Game Plan, a fear and shame-based, wait-until-marriage course that discouraged condom use. She said teaching other forms of sexually transmitted infection or unwanted pregnancy prevention will just result in more sex.

“We tried that for years and years back in the 60s and 70s, and it didn’t work. It caused a terribly declined moral culture,” Sullivan said. “It’s only when authentic abstinence programs that were put in, that we had a reduction in single teen birth and sexual involvement.”

According to a study done by the non-profit Guttmacher Institute, which has examined abortion rates since a year after they were legalized in 1973, the number of abortions peaked in 1981 and has steadily declined since then. The study does not list any possible causes for the decline, and many researchers feel the reasons may be to complex to pinpoint.

Sullivan worries the bill will lead to more sex, which she said causes young men to be dumped and left for older men by the women they slept with. She said the ditched boys then become aggressive and take it out on both men and women. Supporters of comprehensive sex education have said such thoughts, which are contained in many of the abstinence-only courses, are just spreading stereotypes about men and women.

At Bonita Springs Middle School, Marlene Redhead currently teaches health class to seventh and eighth graders, but has been in health classes for decades. Redhead said pregnant sixth graders have been in her class, is certain her eighth-graders are sexually active, and has taught to openly homosexual students, all of whom feel comfortable asking her questions, which she tries to answer. Redhead’s curriculum is based solely on abstinence, but she said it does go into the importance of condoms in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

“If a question comes up on something else, I will answer it. They can ask me in private. I do get a lot of questions,” Redhead said. “They feel very comfortable with me. I also have parent permission signed both in the 7th grade for reproduction and in the 8th grade for sexually transmitted diseases.”

Deutch noted that since the bill’s first run, Brittany Spear’s sister has become pregnant and put on the cover of national magazines, an Oscar-nominated film, “Juno,” explored the issue of teen pregnancy, and the teenage pregnancy of Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol Palin, became a campaign issue. He said kids are talking about sex on the bus and the cafeteria, but not in the home or the classroom, where good, medically-sound data can be shared.

“These are discussions that kids should be having with their parents. First and foremost, this discussion should occur in the home,” Deutch said. “If they’re not going to have the conversation at home, having the conversation with a trusted source like a teacher is absolutely appropriate.”

By Matt Clark

Marconews.com