by Bailey Shoemaker Richards

Created on: August 29, 2009   Last Updated: August 30, 2009

In assessing sex education programs in schools, the issue at hand is not whether the education is just, but if it is effective. Abstinence-only education, if it can be called education, is largely based on a religious push to keep teens from having sex outside marriage; however, numerous studies have shown that merely teaching kids not to have sex is not good enough.

The rate of pregnant teens and teens with sexually transmitted diseases or infections in schools and areas where abstinence-only education is all kids receive is much higher than in areas where students are given an appropriate amount of information.

Teaching kids how to have safe sex is not, as many proponents of abstinence-only education assume, teaching them that having sex is something they should be doing. Making sure teens on the cusp of adolescence know how to protect themselves, should they choose to have sex, is more likely to prevent teen pregnancies than merely telling them not to have sex at all.

It is less just to students to give them no information at all about the risks of sex. Merely showing students the dangers of contracting a sexually transmitted disease without giving them information on how to avoid it is putting them at greater risk of contracting such a disease.

Keeping teens from knowing how and when to use condoms or birth control is not a just action, it is a dangerous one. Safe-sex education does not promote sexual activity, it teaches students how to be safe should they decide to engage in sexual activity.

Far from being an effective way of keeping kids from having sex, abstinence-only education just gives kids enough information to get curious about sex, but not enough to know how to explore it safely. One surefire way to get kids interested in a topic is to tell them only that it's dangerous, bad or forbidden; just what abstinence-only education proposes to do.

By refusing information on sex to teens, they are more likely to find false, misleading or dangerous information from other places or their peers. By giving out only facts that promote not having sex at all, the teens that do have sex are much less likely to know how to protect themselves.

Safe-sex education aims to make sure that students have all the information they need to make healthy sexual choices. Far from being solely about how to put on condoms or acquire other forms of birth control, safe-sex education also teaches teens and kids safe ways to avoid having sex.

Abstinence-only education does not offer students the information or knowledge they need to get out of a high-risk sexual situation or make healthy decisions regarding their bodies; the only option given in this type of pseudo-information is not to have sex at all outside marriage.

For many teens, that option is not one they even consider. Leaving teens with no information on how to have safe sex, leads to a higher number of teen pregnancies, not a lower one.

Justice is not often an issue in sex education, but when it comes to the safety of kids and teens who are starting to get curious about their bodies and sex, the only just action is to make sure that they have all of the information needed to protect themselves. In an attempt to reduce the rate of teen pregnancies, denying students information on how to safely engage in sexual activity or choose not to is not only unjust, it's downright dangerous.

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