State has no right to hector our children

RE Abbie Wightwick’s Western Mail report, “Sex and relationship education should be compulsory” (March 9).

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) and our programme Safe at School do not consider that making Personal Health and Social Education (PHSE) which includes Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) a compulsory subject, is the solution to the problems of sexting, pornography use and sexual violence in schools.

We believe that policy-makers should look at the studies which show the failure of SRE programmes to change the sexual behaviour of young people, before attempting to safeguard children by means of school lessons. Statutory sex education in school will undermine parents, and current approaches to sex education risk sexualising children and young people and make them more rather than less vulnerable to sexual predators, it also undermines parents and risks compounding the culture of confusion around sex and the young.

As far as four-year-olds are concerned, what on earth are we contemplating? Protecting children against sexual exploitation and violence must take place primarily in the home and under the direction of parents, not in schools under the direction of the state, or the Welsh Government, who, by the way, implemented giving abortifacient Morning-After Pills (MAPs) to underage children, without parental consent, at all Welsh chemists.

Our children belong to us, not the state – parents, pull up your socks and beware.

Paul Botto SPUC Information Officer (Wales/Cymru)

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children,

Cardiff