Sex Education

The USA has the highest rate of unplanned pregnancy and abortion in the developed world. Everyone can agree that this is a problem.

The solution is not abstinence-only sex education. Empirically that's hardly better than none at all. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which has for decades conducted surveys regarding sexual and reproductive health, premarital sex is nearly universal among Americans. Abstinence-only sex education does not correlate with lower rates of premarital sex. It does correlate with lower rates of contraception use, and as a result higher rates of unplanned pregnancy. These correlations hold even when adjusted for socioeconomic factors.

The solution is obvious. Comprehensive sex education must be compulsory. Children should be literate in matters of sexual health by their teens, at which point half of them will be sexually active, educated or not. The government does not have control over the body of a child but it can do its best to ensure that he or she makes educated choices.

Since it is a fact that young people will have sex, even if they've been told it's unsafe, and even if they've signed an abstinence pledge, the effort must be to ensure that contraception is available to them when they do. This is particularly the case for those who live in poverty, as becoming pregnant at a young age creates positive feedback, sabotaging educational and career options, and making it less likely that the individual will rise from poverty.


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