With new limits on abortion, Texas needs strong sex education now more than ever
One thing pro-life and pro-choice Texans agree on is that all young people deserve to know how to be healthy and avoid unintended pregnancy.
Our organizations advocate for high-quality sex education to help youth make healthy decisions about sex and relationships. Texas’ recent abortion legislation makes evidence-based education and prevention strategies more important than ever.
Since 2013, Fort Worth ISD has provided sexual health education for students in both middle and high school. This goes beyond the state mandate, which does not require any health education to be provided in high school and historically has only called for abstinence education in middle school.
Effective sex ed and contraceptive access has always been the best way for people, especially teens, to avoid unintended pregnancies. Texas lawmakers should have prioritized providing education that prevents unintended pregnancies, promotes healthy decision making, and reduces cases of sexually transmitted infections, but they didn’t. Here is what happened.
In November 2020, the Texas State Board of Education updated and approved new standards for sex education in schools requiring key information on contraception, prevention of sexually transmitted infections, and healthy relationships — essential tools of prevention education. School districts are required to implement this in the 2022-23 school year.
But in the last legislative session, after the state board passed these new standards, lawmakers added more red tape and administrative burdens, making the implementation process even harder for school districts. This is especially true in rural areas, where resources are already stretched thin. Rural counties in Texas have much higher teen birth rates than urban or suburban regions.
Parents have had the right to opt out for decades. And yet the new law requires parents and guardians to provide written consent to opt their children into sexual health education, making Texas one of only five states to take this approach. If busy parents overlook the permission slip buried in the bottom of a backpack or their inbox, their kids miss out on critical health education.
Along with sex education, contraception is a key factor in reducing the teen pregnancy rate — but lawmakers fell short there, too. The Legislature failed to close a major gap that prevents tens of thousands of teens from accessing birth control. Texas is one of just two states that refuses to cover birth control through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which serves low-income youth through the age of 19.
Whom do these new laws serve? Not youth. Not parents. Not school districts. Everyone pays a price.
Even while polling data shows that parents strongly support medically accurate, age-appropriate sex education for their kids. What is the result? Young people and parents are left without the education and support they need.
So, what can parents do? Talk about sex and healthy relationships with your kids, openly and frequently. Be a partner with schools. Stay engaged. Advocate for quality sex education in your community by signing up for your School Health Advisory Council and keep an eye out for that permission slip from the school.
Wanting youth to be healthy and safe isn’t partisan; it’s something every parent wants for their child. In a hyperpolarized environment, we’ve got to ground ourselves in what our communities need and want.
Divisive legislation scores political points, but our communities and our kids are the collateral damage.
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 6:04 AM.