The Teen Pregnancy Rate Is Too Damn High

There’s a big debate over whether high schools should teach informative sex ed or abstinence ed. One teaches students how to protect themselves from STIs and pregnancy and one tells them “Don’t have sex. ’Cause you will get pregnant and die” (Mean Girls). There’s zero evidence that abstinence ed works — instead there are many accounts from its students that it was damaging emotionally and gave them unhealthy perceptions of sex and their own bodies. Meanwhile there’s abundant evidence that sex ed does work, decreasing rates of teenage pregnancy and the contraction of STIs.

Why are we still having this debate? Some parents cling to the stigma of sex and the human body they were taught as children, arguing that sex is an “inappropriate” topic. They argue that teaching students about sex will make them STI-ridden sex addicts. They think that keeping children in the dark about safe ways to engage in sexual activity will keep them from engaging in sexual activity at all. They’re wrong of course, but the debate remains alive.

Some schools cannot afford to offer sex education, but as important as that issue and its possible solutions are, it’s not what I’m discussing now. This is about school systems knowingly denying their students the education they need, despite having the means to provide it.

This debate came to my upper middle-class, heavily Catholic Massachusetts town a few years ago: some people wanted abstinence ed and some people wanted sex ed. Instead of choosing one of these curriculums or a compromise between the two, we decided on nothing.

And the results of this decision are obvious. I knew of six pregnancies while I was in high school, and I’m sure there were plenty I never heard about. Six isn’t that many, I suppose, but it was relatively large number for the area. The trouble isn’t just pregnancy, it’s a general lack of understanding of how sex and our bodies work. I knew many sexually active girls in high school who didn’t know what the hymen is and even more who swore by the “withdrawal method” (as my AP Euro textbook referred to it). One time, I had to explain to a classmate that, yes, there is a slight chance preseminal fluid can get you pregnant and, no, you aren’t necessarily safe because “it was only in there for a minute”.

The most horrifying story to ever circulate my high school, and the most potent example of this sexual ignorance, was a sophomore who got pregnant my freshman year trying to use a skittles wrapper as a condom.

I’ll give you a minute to cringe about that.

It probably wasn’t true, but that rumor stuck with me as I realized how uninformed people in my high school were about sex. I’d love to blame all of these people for just being absurdly ignorant — and I’ll admit I do still do that a bit — but the truth is they were never taught this basic information. This failure is on the school, not the students. My school and many others seem to just ignore the existence of this problem, thinking “if we pretend our students aren’t having sex, maybe they’ll stop.” It’s not only ridiculous, it’s affecting students’ lives and futures.

The solution to this problem is simple: teach real sex ed. Don’t use scare tactics to keep students abstinent, just teach them how to be safe. Teach them how to put on a condom, how to get birth control, where to get tested for STIs, who they can go to if they’re in trouble or have questions. This shouldn’t be that big of a deal for schools. Just do your job. Educate your students.