Lobby for comprehensive sexuality education

Those rallying for choice at the MN capitol today are likely finding their voices fall on deaf ears. In the last election, Minnesota moved from having prochoice majorities to a minority, that will even struggle to uphold any gubernatorial vetoes. The saving grace is that we do have a strong prochoice governor who doesn't believe that its the governments job to legislate a woman's uterus.

For today's prochoice lobby day, I wanted to focus on a bill that should have passed every year, but usually doesn't make it out of committee (even when we had prochoice majorities). The comprehensive sexuality education bill provides schools in Minnesota with support and structure to ensure that all Minnesota kids understand their developing bodies, reproduction and decision making. Over 90% of Minnesota parents want schools to teach sex education that includes pregnancy prevention and abstinence. Yet there has been no move to ensure that Minnesota kids receive this education.

A survey of Minnesota teachers shows that new policies are needed to ensure that kids receive this critical information.  Making sex ed a high school graduation requirement, ensuring districts and school boards develop policies for comprehensive sex education and finally passage of the state comprehensive sexuality education bill will help teachers share medically accurate information with their students.

The key is to ensure that our kids receive medically accurate information and the only way to do that is to develop a state standard for sexuality education as a part of health curriculum.  Unfortunately most curriculum decisions are left to the local school districts where many lack the knowledge and support to provide this information. This decentralized approach to education has resulted in the United States having some of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancies in industrialized countries. Providing our kids with information and resources will reverse these trends. Comprehensive sexuality education will ensure they have all the information needed to make choices about their bodies and personal lives.