Pa. needs uniform sex ed instruction
To the Times: AccessMatters applauds the Wallingford-Swarthmore school board for its recent action to ensure students in the district are receiving accurate, unbiased, comprehensive information about their sexual health and healthy relationships.
The board’s action demonstrates a recognition that students need to be provided with factual – not ideologically motivated - information and tools to remain healthy and to help them stay in school. Comprehensive sex education provides medically-accurate, age-appropriate, unbiased information about abstinence, healthy relationships, contraceptive options, and HIV/ STD prevention. Studies continually show that having conversations with teens and adolescents around sexual health topics and giving them the tools they need to stay healthy delays sexual activity rather than accelerating it.
Yet, Pennsylvania still does not have statewide standards for comprehensive sex education. That means what constitutes sex education in the same district and sometimes even in the same school can vary drastically. This variation and inconsistency points to the need for comprehensive sex education legislation so that educators across the state can provide students with the same medically-accurate information. Legislation supporting accurate and equitable sex education has been proposed year after year in Pennsylvania, and year after year Pennsylvania legislators fail to pass these standards into law. A current proposal in Pennsylvania, House Bill 1615, would create standards for sex education curricula to ensure the information and education students receive across the Commonwealth is medically-accurate, unbiased, and consistent.
We must insist that our elected officials in Harrisburg begin prioritizing the health and well being of Pennsylvania’s youth over politics and ideology. The WallingfordSwarthmore school board has set an example. Enacting House Bill 1615 would ensure all students in all districts in the Commonwealth had access to the same important information to assist them in staying healthy, engaging in healthy relationships, and making informed choices.
Melissa Weiler Gerber, President
& CEO, AccessMatters