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Originally Posted by timmgirvan
I can see that the problems are becoming clearer to you also. And yet the school system proposes to give 11-12 yr old girls a shot to lessen the chance of STD's or pregnancy. Doesn't that sound like they are subliminally promoting a lifestyle?
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Timm, the shot to which you are referring is to help prevent cervical cancer, which can result from genital warts. You're saying better to promote morality by keeping a cancer vaccine from women? "Don't have sex, girls! You might get cancer!" Dear God.
I think schools should give kids complete, thorough sex ed (and the HPV vaccine, while they're at it) because it's a health issue. Condoms are a matter of public health, as are contraceptives of all kinds (kids need to know the pill prevents pregnancy, not VD, for one). It's up to the parents to talk to their kids about the moral ramifications of sex, and they should. But it's not the government's place to teach "morality" by concealing information. Kids should not be denied a life-saving shot or clinical information. It's not going to encourage promiscuity; it's going to encourage teenagers who are going to have sex anyway to use protection. About half of all kids who make abstinence pledges break them within a year, and the majority of those kids don't use any sort of birth control, because they already believe they're doing something "bad" so why be intelligent about it?
Plus, once they are out in the world, how are we again going to have the same opportunity to educate young Americans about their own bodies? How much sex ed did you get in a classroom setting once you were out of high school? (Sorry, in the field experience doesn't count, unless you were sleeping with your sex ed teacher) I got a grand total of 15 minutes-- freshman year of college, a teacher's aide came into Writing Workshop I and showed us how to put on a condom. And that was because I went to college. Where again are we going to be able to educate people about what is, all said and done, a health issue?
HPV vaccines and comprehensive sex ed for all public school students, say I. And then the kids can go home and talk to their parents about what they learned. Now there's a concept... parents talking to their kids about sex...