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Anti-choicers gone wild

Jill

If you’re a high school student in Ohio, be careful around crying people — you might get AIDS from them. At least, that’s what your state’s abstinence-only education curriculum teaches. Ohio abstinence-only “education” programs:

Overstate the failure rates of condom use, blame contraceptives for poor mental health among youths and erroneously suggest that birth control pills will increase a girl’s future chances of infertility.

Misrepresent religious conviction as scientific fact. One program urges teens to “follow God’s plan for purity,” while another recommends books that are religious in nature.

Contain inaccurate or misleading information about the transmission or detection of sexual diseases. One curriculum described HIV as a virus that can remain undetected either by test or physical symptoms for six months to 10 years, when in fact most antibodies are present within two to eight weeks after exposure. The curriculum also suggested incorrectly that HIV can be transmitted through tears and open-mouth kissing.

Is not applicable to gay teens because same-sex marriages are illegal in Ohio.

In other anti-choice craziness, Planned Parenthood of Missouri is being ordered to re-pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in family planning funding because they provide abortions — despite the fact that none of that money paid for abortions or abortion services. It went to programs designed to prevent abortions. That’s anti-choice logic for ya.

8 thoughts on Anti-choicers gone wild

  3. With all this talk of reframing the debate, I think we should start calling it abstinence indoctrination, because that’s exactly what it is. My sister and I were both subject to it at our Catholic high school; and an “education” it ain’t. I proceeded to spend eight miserable years in the closet, and she wound up in the hospital with anemia because she didn’t know that a menstrual period that lasts a month isn’t normal. The ironic part is they drilled it into our heads how evil and sinful birth control is, and now she’s on the pill to control her whacked out hormones.

  4. I live in Ohio, I have five children, three have now graduated from high school, one is still in high school one is in elementary school. There is alot of misinformation that has come from these sex education classes. Mine have come home, asked me questions that friends had or asked for clarification on things friends told them or what they have been told during this class. If you do not have an open relationship with your child when it comes to sex? Let’s hope one of their friends does with their parents. The AIDS from tears was one of the things I was asked, was oral sex really sex, if you had anal sex were you still a virgin, can you get AIDS from oral sex, were among some of the questions I’ve been asked.

    I’ll be honest…I have encouraged abstinence with mine. Sex is a part of an adult relationship and if they are adult enough to have sex they also have to be adult enough to deal with the possible consequences. I’ve also encouraged them to make sure they have been with a person long enough to know if this is someone they want to be with sexually. I also made it very clear that before they decided to have sex to come talk to me about it so we could make sure they were using an effective birth control method. I had suggested to them that they should date someone for at least six months before making the initial decision to have sex for the first time. So far this has worked….

    With my oldest daughter our doctor was far from friendly about it. My second daughter has decided she is not ready/has not found someone she is interested in. With my third daughter it was a fairly recent decision for her. Our new family doctor supported my decision and believed it was better to be pro-active when it comes to making sure the odds are in favor of none of my daughters having a child at this point. She even suggested an alternate birth control method the nueva ring which has proven to be alot easier than the pill. My son who is my oldest came to me for condom advice, as I told him no matter what method of birth control his partner says she is using I suggest using a condom as well. I’ve done the same with the girls, suggesting a condom should still be used in addition to their method of birth control.

    I realize forbidding teens to have sex doesn’t work. Encouraging them to make smart decisions and to make sure no matter what their decision is you support them? To me the only answer. None of these programs whether they are abstience only or not can replace what is our job as parents.

  5. I went to school in Ohio. In 5th grade, our “facts of life” discussion involved watcing a 20 minute film of a woman give birth. They showed the episiotemy, we heard her screams, we saw the epidural, we saw the afterbirth, all in 1970’s bad color. It made me decide I’d never have sex. I’ve since changed my mind but am not sure I can handle childbirth.

    I was in high school in the mid-80s when discussions of AIDS first started and the information we were given in 1986 was a lot more accurate than what kids at these same schools are being given now. It’s horrific and I can only hope that Mr. Smith, Ms. Ashburn, and Mr. Rineholt aren’t just reading from these books. It makes me sick and worried and very, very angry. I had a conversation with my boyfriend’s mother recently where she argued with me that mosquitoes could spread AIDS and I had to find a medical article online to cause her to change her mind. It was disheartening to say the least. Although I also had to tell a young woman who graduated from what I thought was a decent suburban high school in Ohio, who started taking the pill and got pregnant a few weeks later, that it can take three months for the pill to truly kick in. She’s a nursing student at a community college, wants to going into pediatric nursing, and she didn’t understand how birth control worked. She honestly thought that if you got pregnant the pill would just cause an abortion before you realized you were pregnant. And she thought as long as she didn’t have sex when she was taking the sugar pills she’d be okay, but if she had sex while she took the sugar pills, she would get pregnant.

  6. I am sitting here wishing Lisa had been my mom!

    I got uh…nothing. Yeah, my 60’s parents gave me nada, zip.

    That said, I’m still pretty sure that it was better than what I would have gotten if I’d grown up in Ohio!

  7. My father wouldn’t discuss it and my mother thought the way to deal with it was to avoid it and “it” wouldn’t happen…so that is probably one of the main reasons I’ve become the kind of parent I am.

    Have I made mistakes? Of course…but I’ve never told my kids I was perfect….

    So Elizabeth you’ll probably be like me and learn from our own pasts to make sure our kids don’t have to repeat most of what we went thru.

  8. Lisa, I noticed that when you talked about “encouraging abstinence” you contextualized it as something that we do for teenagers only. I think a lot of people are under the misconception that these programs are nothing more than the same ol’ “wait ’til you’re 18” stuff we heard as teenagers. They’re not–they’re much worse and prescribe two options–abstinence and marriage. You weren’t encouraging the abstinence they’re encouraging. I think this is a distinction that needs to be acknowledged more by our side so as to remind parents who tentatively support it that the ignorance and sexual repression the right wants for kids isn’t just a teenage thing but a lifetime burden.

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