How Abortion Saves Lives

One life that could have been saved by abortion, and another that may still be.

First, a Louisville teen so denied the facts about sexuality, contraception and abortion that she gave birth in a toilet and was so terrified someone would find out that she killed the infant.

Matthew Glowicki at the Courier:

The teenage mother who police say killed her newborn girl last summer told police in an interview she gave birth to the child unexpectedly and then smothered her.

Visiting her grandmother who was ill at Jewish Hospital on July 22, then-15-year-old Jasmine Wade felt something in her stomach. She went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and gave a slight push, she said.

“Something just came out, and I had looked down and … it was a baby,” she tells them and begins to cry.

She picked her up and held the child in her hands.

“I didn’t believe it was happening,” she told the two Louisville Metro Police detectives interviewing her from her hospital bed later that day, as detailed in police evidence recently filed in Jefferson Circuit Court by prosecutors.

SNIP

 

“Why did u kill her” the friend asked.

“I had to. i had no choice.”

Precisely.  Governor Lying Coward closed the only place in Kentucky that offered education, contraception and early abortion to low-income teenage girls. Planned Parenthood would have saved her by helping her avoid pregnancy or by ending it by removing a microscopic clump of cells.

Instead, we have a dead infant and and might-as-well-be-dead-teenager, who will be spending the rest of her life in prison.

Meanwhile, a Kentucky woman with a much-wanted and cherished pregnancy is faced with the likelihood of giving birth to a microcephalic "infant," which has no chance at a remotely human life.

From the Herald:

The Kentucky Department of Health says it has confirmed the state's third case of the Zika virus in a pregnant woman.

A statement from the agency on Friday said the woman, who is from the Louisville area, tested positive for the disease after traveling to Central America in recent months. She has recovered from the illness.

The mosquito-borne virus, which is spreading in Latin America and the Caribbean, normally causes only mild symptoms.

Health officials are investigating whether there is a link between Zika infections in pregnant women and a rare birth defect called microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads.

That means profound permanent retardation rendering them unable to ever feed, clothe or clean themselves, much less communicate.

Unless that woman has private insurance and a rational, non-freakazoid doctor, she's in for a lifetime nightmare.

The kind that Indiana Governor Steve Pence is forcing on the doomed women of his state.

Republican Gov. Mike Pence has signed a bill making Indiana the second state to ban abortions because of fetal genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome.

Yes, there is an alternative to these horrors.  Encourage more new doctors like this one, who is determined to fulfill her Hippocratic Oath by providing abortions.

We live in a country where roughly half of all pregnancies are unplanned, so there are, unsurprisingly, many women who become pregnant and choose not to give birth. We know that about one in three women will have an abortion by age 45. Is this number, as some have argued, too high? In the 1990s, the Clinton administration popularized the notion that abortion ought to be "safe, legal, and rare." I understand this sentiment, but I think this misses the point. There are a great number of ways to reduce abortion rates. Some of which, as I would argue we have seen in the past couple of decades, do not promote the health and reproductive autonomy of women.

 

Moreover, insisting single-mindedly that abortion should be "rare" further stigmatizes the one in three women who will make this decision. From a public health perspective, the end-all objective should not be to reduce abortion rates, but instead to further empower more women to make informed reproductive choices.

This may seem like a trivial distinction, but it is the difference between an agenda that conforms women's health to socially accepted standards and an agenda that truly promotes the health of women.

The Dangerous Idiocy of Repug Control

One seat. Kentucky Democrats lose one seat in the House in special elections this March or the all-House elections this November and the beautiful Bluegrass State will turn into the dystopian hellhole in which Kansans now suffer.

Zandar Versus the Stupid:

I am really, really hoping that the lesson Democrats get from the Obama years is "Not voting in midterm elections and letting Republicans get complete control of a majority of state governments is a bad idea." You keep getting states like Kansas.

Kansas Republicans are pushing for a bill that would allow teachers to face criminal prosecution if they teach students material they consider harmful, the Wichita Eagle reports.

The bill, sponsored by State Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook (R), stems from a controversy over a poster in the Shawnee Mission public school district in which a poster reading, “How do people express their sexual feelings?” The poster listed “oral sex” and other acts, the Eagle reports.

The bill was brought up for consideration at a committee meeting Tuesday.

Pitcher-Cook said “state laws should protect parents’ rights to safeguard our children against harmful materials, especially in schools.”

As of now, teachers are protected from misdemeanor charges associated with giving children sexual content, if the content is part of a lesson. If the bill passes, teachers could be charged and spend up to six months in jail, along with a fine.

Tom Witt spoke out against the bill on behalf of his husband, who is a teacher, and said it would be used to intimidate teachers and create fear. He submitted a list of books from the American Library Association which are the most banned, including Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

“Here’s what my husband wants to know: Which of the books on the list are going to send him to jail?” he demanded. “That’s all we need to know.”

At this point Republicans in 2016 want to criminalize being Muslim, being LGBTQ, being Latino, being black, being a voting Democrat, and now being a sex-ed teacher. These people are crazy, dangerous lunatics.

But you know what they do that liberals, progressives, and Democrats refuse to do?

Vote.

No, Your Freakazoid Lies Are Not Education

Now we need the same ruling on teaching creationism as science, supply-side jeebus as economics and "original intent" as history.

Think Progress:

In a decision that’s being hailed as “historic,” a judge in California has ruled that health classes focusing exclusively on telling students to remain abstinent until marriage fall short of the state’s comprehensive sex ed requirements.

In his opinion, Fresno County Superior Court Judge Donald Black concludes that, given the high rates of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy in the U.S., medically accurate sexual health information is “an important public right.”

Black’s decision narrowly applies to about 40,000 students who attend the Clovis Unified School District. However, since his opinion represents the first-ever ruling on California’s decade-old sex education standards, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — whose legal counsel represented the plaintiffs in the suit — believes it sets an important precedent for the rest of the state.

“This is the first time that abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula have been found to be medically inaccurate,” Phyllida Burlingame, the director of reproductive justice policy at the ACLU, told the San Francisco Chronicle. She added that the ruling should send a strong message to other schools that “young people need complete, accurate health information required by law.”

SNIP

Plaintiffs alleged that the district was showing students abstinence-focused videos that contained “egregiously inaccurate and biased information,” like comparing a woman who has engaged in sex to a dirty shoe, and suggesting that men are physically unable to stop themselves once they become sexually aroused. One video, entitled Never Regret The Choice, suggested that homosexuality doesn’t exist by encouraging students to adopt the mantra, “One man, one woman, one life.”

The suit was dropped in 2014 after Clovis Unified School District changed its sex ed policies to bring them more in line with California law. Black, however, ruled that the district is still responsible for paying the parents’ legal fees, since their lawsuit prompted the policy changes.

California is hardly the only state where students receive biased health information that focuses solely on abstinence. There aren’t any national requirements for comprehensive sex ed instruction in public schools, which allows 19 states to continue to require health materials to emphasize the importance of engaging in sexual activity only within marriage. In addition to failing to include information about birth control and condoms, abstinence-only programs typically tell kids that having sex will make them dirty — comparing people who have had sex to chewed up gum, used tape, dirty chocolate, and glasses of spit.

Even though a significant body of scientific research has confirmed that abstinence-only curricula are ineffective at convincing students to delay sex, and don’t prepare them to safeguard their sexual health, these programs continue to be propped up with state and federal funding. Just last month, Congress quietly appropriated $25 million in additional funding for the very same type of abstinence education programs that Black ruled violate the public right to medically accurate sex ed.

Study: Real Sex Ed Helps Kids Postpone Sex

Yeah, I know, what else is new.  But now there's data.

Think Progress:

Comprehensive sex ed classes that emphasize healthy relationships and family involvement can encourage more middle school students to put off having sex, according to the results from a new study published in the Journal of School Health. The results have big implications for school districts that are trying to decide what type of health classes to offer to kids in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.

The three-year study was conducted by researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Women, who wanted to figure out whether Get Real — a comprehensive sex ed program developed by Planned Parenthood — has an impact on middle schoolers’ sexual behavior. In order to do that, the researchers tracked a group of racially and economically diverse kids at 24 different schools in the Boston area, half of which implemented Get Real and half of which continued with their existing sex ed programs. Kids were periodically surveyed about their sexual activity.

The results were “quite strong,” according to the lead researchers on the project. The study found that 16 percent fewer boys and 15 percent fewer girls became sexually active by the end of eighth grade after participating in Get Real, compared to the kids who didn’t participate in that curriculum.

It’s particularly significant that Get Real helped both girls and boys delay sex. The previous research into other sex ed programs has been mixed, and hasn’t been able to demonstrate such clear results for both genders.

 Or as Wonkette puts it:

Wow, it’s almost as if having open and honest conversations with kids about sex and its consequences leads kids to be more knowledgeable and responsible and to make exactly the kinds of choices that the very people who oppose real sex ed say they should make. Weird!

And you thought Planned Parenthood just built multi-billion dollar abortionplexes, huh? (No, you didn’t really think that because you are not A Idiot. Or Rep. John Fleming. But we repeat ourselves.)

We assume this study will lead all the conservatives who want to shut down Planned Parenthood and defund real sex ed to rethink their strategy and perhaps support this program. We also expect to see pigs fly by our window any second now …

Compare and Contrast

Divine Irony:

liberalsarecool:

Conservatism as policy is a failure. #abstinence

(Source: adeyami)

Life Jackets

ummagumma.co

(Source: limejello, via redakota):

Abstinence Lies Are Child Abuse

Joe Sonka brands the anti-science lies creationists like the freakazoids at the Kentucky Creation Museum tell to captive school children as "intellectual child abuse."  That kind of anti-education handicaps those children for life, making it difficult if not impossible for them to thrive and succeed in a scientifically reality-based world.

But there's a worse kind of intellectual child abuse perpetrated by freakazoids on helpless children: abstinence lies.

 

Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress:

Elizabeth Smart became a household name after she was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City, UT at the age of 14 and held in captivity for nine months. She was forced into a polygamous marriage, tethered to a metal cable, and raped daily until she was rescued from her captors nine months later. Smart was recovered while she and her kidnappers were walking down a suburban street, leading many Americans who followed her story on the national news to wonder: Why didn’t she just run away as soon as she was brought outside? 

Speaking to an audience at Johns Hopkins about issues of human trafficking and sexual violence, Smart recently offered an answer to that question. She explained that some human trafficking victims don’t run away because they feel worthless after being raped, particularly if they have been raised in conservative cultures that push abstinence-only education and emphasize sexual purity:

Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.”
Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

Now in her mid-twenties, Smart runs a foundation to help educate children about sexual crimes. She now believes that children should grow up learning that “you will always have value and nothing can change that.”

Social psychologists and sexual abuse counselors agree that comprehensive sex education can help prevent sexual crimes. Teaching children about their bodies gives them the tools to describe acts of abuse without feeling as embarrassed or uncomfortable, and it also helps elevate their self-confidence and sense of bodily autonomy. A shame-based approach to genitalia and sexuality, on the other hand, sends kids the message that they can’t discuss or ask questions about any of those issues.

Nonethless, abstinence-only education programs have a long history of imparting harmful messages that shame youth about their sexuality instead of teaching them the facts they need to safeguard their health. A high school in West Virginia recently made national headlines after hosting a conservative religious speaker who allegedly told students “if you take birth control, your mother probably hates you” and “I could look at any one of you in the eyes right now and tell if you’re going to be promiscuous.” In Smart’s home state of Utah — which is home to a large religiously conservative Mormon community — sex education is currently mandated, but lawmakers have repeatedly pushed to weaken the state law and reinstate an abstinence-only curriculum.

 Never fails to astound me how the xianists justify every kind of cruelty and abuse in the name of Bronze Age mythology and an invisible sky wizard.

Authoritarian FAIL in West Virginia

Here's a clue, freakazoids: young women who have been accepted to Wellesley are not easily intimidated.

Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress:

A West Virginia high school student is filing an injunction against her principal, who she claims is threatening to punish her for speaking out against a factually inaccurate abstinence assembly at her school. Katelyn Campbell, who is the student body vice president at George Washington High School, alleges her principal threatened to call the college where she’s been accepted to report that she has “bad character.”

George Washington High School recently hosted a conservative speaker, Pam Stenzel, who travels around the country to advocate an abstinence-only approach to teen sexuality. Stenzel has a long history of using inflammatory rhetoric to convince young people that they will face dire consequences for becoming sexually active. At GW’s assembly, Stenzel allegedly told students that “if you take birth control, your mother probably hates you” and “I could look at any one of you in the eyes right now and tell if you’re going to be promiscuous.” She also asserted that condoms aren’t safe, and every instance of sexual contact will lead to a sexually transmitted infection.

Campbell refused to attend the assembly, which was funded by a conservative religious organization called “Believe in West Virginia” and advertised with fliers that proclaimed “God’s plan for sexual purity.” Instead, she filed a complaint with the ACLU and began to speak out about her objections to this type of school-sponsored event. Campbell called Stenzel’s presentation “slut shaming” and said that it made many students uncomfortable.

Wellesley College, predictably, responded that Campbell's spot in the fall class is secure.

But that's not the best part. This petition from the Wellesley Sisters is:

Katelyn Campbell: Welcome to Wellesley College. We think you'll fit right in.

My favorite line:

That your principal would believe a call to Wellesley to inform them of this issue would be a threat to your admission status is laughable. In reality, your actions prove that the College couldn’t be a better fit.

 I think Katelyn Campbell will be perfect as Sandra Fluke's vice president.

Sexual Reality Squeaks Through Kentucky House

The repressed freakazoids in the senate will kill it, of course, but their spittled-flecked hysteria over the very idea of preventing disease in sexually-active teens ought to be a hoot to watch.

From the Courier:

A bill that would require young boys and girls to be immunized for the human papillomavirus, known as HPV, was approved by a narrow margin in the House on Tuesday with a vote of 54-40.

Under the bill, girls ages 9 to 16 and boys ages 10 to 16, would be immunized for the virus, which can lead to cancer. Parents who do not wish to have their children immunized would have the ability to opt out. An amendment approved on the House floor Tuesday would require schools to send out forms to parents explaining the opt-out provision.


Bill sponsor Rep. David Watkins, D-Henderson, said this is an opportunity to possibly prevent cancers and should be done for the health of future generations.

Rep. Ben Waide, R-Madisonville, spoke against the bill on the floor, saying he believes that parents already have the option to vaccinate their children and the state should not mandate it.

It's really fucking hilarious how freakazoid parents convince themselves that ignorance prevents sex.

Hilarious, that is, until the kids die.

Sex and the Repressed Repug, Virginia Edition

Sexual repression is a terrible affliction, and one that should disqualify its victims from holding political office or other positions of authority.

People like Ken Cuccinelli need serious professional help.

Or, you know, a decent blow job.

Josh Israel at Think Progress:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), the state Republican Party’s apparent choice for governor in 2013, claims he is “best known for his efforts to preserve liberty and defend the Constitution.” But in 2005, he used his position as a state Senator to try to censor a university sexual education event felt was “pushing a pro-sex agenda and an anything goes agenda.”

In 2005, a pro-choice student group at George Mason University organized its inaugural “Sextravaganza” event — a campus sexuality and health fair aimed at teaching attendees about practicing safer sex and preventing unplanned pregnancy. For this event, the group organized 15 booths to provide “information on abstinence, condoms and self-help exams, as well as sexual orientation.” An array of views were presented to approximately 500 attendees: a minister from the Campus Catholic Ministry staffed one of the tables promoting abstinence and opposing abortion, while others promoted abortion rights and provided information about safer sex.

Sen. Cuccinelli, however, was outraged that his alma mater — a public state university — would host an event he believed “really just designed to push sex and sexual libertine behavior as far, fast and furiously as possibly.” Among Cuccinelli’s objections to the event:

• Upset that information about sexuality — other than abstinence only — would be presented to adult college students, he said it was symptomatic of the “moral depravity that has crept across this commonwealth and this country.”

SNIP

• Upset that the GMU Pride Alliance presented information on sexual orientation, he said, “You can’t have safe homosexual sex. There is no such thing and yet one of the sponsoring groups is the homosexual group on campus.”
• Upset about an (ultimately scrapped) plan to raffle off sex toys at the fair, he said the event would “push every form of sexual promiscuity there is out there.”
• Upset that some of the advertising for the event was paid for out of student activity fees, he said, “”This is a how-to fun fair for sex. This isn’t education. This is pushing sex. It’s encouraging it… It doesn’t swell me with pride to see my alma mater putting on a soft porn show.”
• Upset that “aphrodisiacs” including Hershey’s Kisses, cucumber slices, strawberry Jello-O, and oyster crackers were given out at the event, Cuccinelli, Black, and three other Republican legislators wrote to the GMU’s president, “We appropriated $33.1 million in FY 2005 to treat STDs and AIDS. We are concerned that the frivolous manner in which human sexuality is being treated here with GMU approval is counter productive to the best interests of Virginia citizens.”

SNIP

Cuccinelli maintained the event would disgrace the school, warning that Virginia government might need to “establish some statewide standards” to prevent this and similar events at other public colleges and universities. But the university’s administration emphatically rejected suggestions from Cuccinelli and then state-Delegate Dick Black (R) that they cancel the event. The chief of staff to the president of GMU called Sextravaganza 2005 “as well an organized and delivered student event as we’ve had on campus,” and it was repeated in future years.

Personally, I'm upset that my alma mater never offered fun shit like this when I was in school.  Closest we came was drawing straws to see who would have to step up and request to purchase the behind-the-counter Playboy down at the Walgreen's.

Abstinence-Only Non-Education Harms Children

By funding abstinence-only programs, the Obama administration is guilty of child abuse.

Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress:

A new study from the Guttmacher Institute unsurprisingly finds that greater knowledge about contraceptive services is directly correlated
to a decrease in young adults’ risky sexual behavior. However, after quizzing a nationally representative sample of 1,800 sexually active Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 on their basic knowledge of contraception methods, Guttmacher reports that “more than half of young men and a quarter of young women received low scores on contraceptive knowledge, and six in 10 underestimated the effectiveness of oral contraceptives.” The study ultimately concluded:

Programs to increase young adults’ knowledge about contraceptive methods and use are urgently needed. Given the demonstrated link between method knowledge and contraceptive behaviors, such programs
may be useful in addressing risky behavior in this population.

Pervasive misinformation about contraceptives — often leading to higher rates of unintended pregnancies — is one of the serious consequences of abstinence-only education programs. Sex education programs that lack comprehensive sexuality information prevent young adults from fully educating themselves about their reproductive health, their contraceptive options, and the best sexual practices to avoid potentially risky behavior.

The Guttmacher study highlights this very educational gap. Although a majority of respondents (69 percent of the women and almost half of the men) agreed that they were “committed to avoiding pregnancy,” they seem to doubt that birth control is an effective means to achieve this goal. 40 percent of respondents said that birth control doesn’t matter because “when it is your time to get pregnant, it will happen.”

It’s especially important to emphasize the need for comprehensive sexual education programs in light of the Obama administration’s recent decision to support an abstinence-only curriculum as part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ list of “pregnancy prevention programs.” Considering that abstinence-only programs have been proven to be less effective at preventing pregnancy, how much more evidence does the Obama administration need to revoke its endorsement of birth control misinformation campaigns?

Repugs Cause Stupid Sex

On Thursday, soon-to-be-ex Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin epitomized the work repug governors across the country are doing to create jobs and grow the economy by signing legislation to ... wait for it ... mandate teaching abstinence instead of sex education in the state's high schools.

For the zillionth time, teenagers are going to have sex, regardless. The only question is whether they have smart sex or stupid sex.

Via Bon The Geek, yet more proof that teaching abstinence causes stupid sex.

It has been reconfirmed -- yet again. Research conducted by the Guttmacher Institute indicates that sexuality education does not encourage teenagers to have sex sooner or to engage in more sexual risk-taking behaviors. As a matter of fact, it delays sex.

As governments fail to make sexuality education a priority or continue to fund abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, we're once again being given scholarly, evidence-based data that indicates the importance of comprehensive sexuality education. This complements Douglas Kirby's 2008 review of evaluation studies examining abstinence, comprehensive, and/or STD/HIV sex education programs. Kirby found that two-thirds of the 48 programs teaching both abstinence and contraceptive use had positive behavioral effects.

So given the good news such studies yield time after time, when will the politicians start to listen? How many research studies like these do we need before policymakers begin funding and supporting comprehensive sexuality education efforts? They've been ignoring the evidence for far too long, continuing to cultivate a culture of sexually ignorant youth, who lack the knowledge and skills necessary to postpone sex or protect themselves.

My 6th-grade class was the first in the Lexington, Kentucky public schools to receive sex education. It was a week of cartoons illustrating female reproduction, with virtually nothing on male reproductive organs and less than nothing on the mechanics of actual sex.

But what it did present were, in fact, actual facts. Not lies about contraception and condoms. Not myths about virginity. Not destructive propaganda about abstinence.

Yet another fight we won 40 years ago and are having to fight again.

The Puritans Have a Lot to Answer For

There are days when it seems as if 90 percent of the crimes, despair and insanity in the world can be blamed on our failure to teach our children the facts - all the facts - about sexuality.

@PZMyers has a heartbreaking and horrific example of the consequences here.

But it's not just a sin of omission - the brave teachers trying to illuminate our sex education Dark Ages are the targets of intimidation and even violence.

Ann Lekas Miller in The Nation:

In 1982, Martha Roper received her first death threat.
 
Martha—perhaps better known as Ms. Roper—is not a drug trafficker or a gang member. She does not work for the government, or involve herself in dangerous, secret operations. She does not even run an abortion clinic. She teaches sexuality education.

Martha Roper is an award-winning, widely acclaimed sexuality education teacher and author in the state of Missouri. She holds a master’s degree in family and community relations from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and taught sexuality education in Missouri for over thirty years.

“I had a 13-year-old son around that time,” Ms. Roper told me. “Fortunately, he had a sense of humor, and when a letter addressed to ‘Lesbian Slut’ or ‘Sex Sinner’ would arrive in the mail box, he would say, ‘I think this one’s for you, Mom.’”

Ms. Roper began receiving death threats and hate mail in the early eighties, and they have never completely stopped. Since the advent of the Internet and online technologies such as Google Earth and Google Maps, Roper has had to become much more quiet for her own safety.

In the state of Missouri—or perhaps we should say “misery” as Martha jokingly tells me—it is not possible to get an advanced degree in Health Education without a major in Physical Education. Neither degree leads to a teaching credential. Upon returning to Missouri after obtaining the degree that she felt she needed in New York, Roper looked for jobs as a sexuality education teacher only to be told that her skills would not be needed, because “we don’t have that problem here.”

As a Missouri native who felt that she entered marriage and motherhood with little knowledge of sex and sexuality, Ms. Roper was determined to stay in her home state, and teach the curriculum that she had always needed and never had.

“One day, a rumor started that I wore a red shirt the mornings after I would have sex with my husband,” Martha told me. “Obviously, there was no truth in that. No matter how absurd it was, the rumor would not die. Kids told their parents, their parents told the principal. Young adult teachers even helped spread the rumor! Even my department head assumed it was true.

“If that doesn’t turn a teacher away from dealing with anything remotely sexual, what will?

“I was extremely lucky that my school’s principal would have defended me until the day I died. He would tell parents who complained, ‘If your child’s math teacher had a master’s degree and was an expert in their field of study, would you call me to complain that your child was learning too much in their math class?’  ”

Another veteran sexuality educator and sexuality education advocate, Dr. Elizabeth Schroeder, now executive director of Answer, tells me that even teachers in more liberal states, such as her home state of New Jersey, face the same stigma and fear teaching sexuality education.

“Even in states where there is a mandate or a law, such as New Jersey and now New York City, there are no systems of accountability. It is still incumbent upon the very brave teachers who are willing to risk difficult questions from the students, controversy from the school board and ultimately their job security to keep sexuality education alive. No educator or administrator should have to feel like their job is on the line when they are adhering to their state’s law.”

Comprehensive sexuality education in public schools faces a perfect storm of rampant budget cuts and hopeless personal and political stigma. Sexuality education and educators are often categorized as optional and unnecessary, placed immediately on the budget chopping block alongside arts and music programs. At worst, teachers’ personal motives are publicly questioned, making them the victims of humiliating rumors and potential threats.

“I worked as a consultant in a school district in which a school board member announced at a meeting that I supported teaching kindergarteners how to have sex,” Dr. Schroeder told me. “It was as preposterous as it was offensive—there isn’t an educator on this planet who would do something so stupid or inappropriate. As a parent of a kindergartener myself, I was deeply offended. But opponents of sexuality education aren’t concerned with facts—they are more interested in making loud, outlandish, unfounded accusations, and because they yell and scream the loudest, far too many people listen. It has to stop.”

Despite the drama of school board hysteria, parents from many different regions of the United States overwhelmingly support comprehensive sexuality education in public schools. However, the vocal minority representing the “moral high ground” of abstinence-only education intimidates school administrators into shutting down sexuality education programs entirely.

“Parents never walk into a math or science class and tell the teachers how they should or shouldn’t teach their classes,” Dr. Schroeder told me, “Most districts have an opt-out policy, but many schools give over to parents completely and shut down the class for everyone. This is wrong.”

I strongly suspect that one of the many ironies here is that the children whose parents most strongly object to sexuality education are the children most desperately in need of it.

Liberals know that in our sex-soaked culture - regardless of whether you condemn or celebrate it - children need the facts about sex, and it is a public responsibility to make sure they get them.

ACLU of KY Stands Up For Abortion Rights

I will be damned. Just when I start to wonder what use the ACLU of Kentucky is in a state where taxpayer-supported religious propaganda and intellectual child abuse go unchallenged by the supposed defenders of the Bill of Rights, the ACLU takes one of the most dangerously unpopular positions imaginable.

From an emailed Action Alert:

The Kentucky State Legislature has introduced several anti-choice measures that we must oppose for the sake of women’s health, privacy and autonomy over their own bodies. Next week on Thursday, February 17th, the House Health and Welfare Committee will hear three anti-choice bills. These measures are another attempt by the government to interfere with a woman’s ability to access an abortion.

Urge your representatives to oppose House Bills 215 and 243, and Senate Bill 9.

Send a clear message to the Kentucky Legislature that Kentuckians do not support any more abortion restrictions. Senate Bill 9 would force a woman to come to one of Kentucky’s two abortion clinics at least 24 hours prior to her procedure and force her to hear a description of the fetus regardless of her wishes. House Bill 215 would ban abortions after 20 weeks and House Bill 243 would not allow teens from outside of Kentucky to access a judicial bypass to receive abortion care.

These measures are some of the most aggressive attempts to erase access to abortion in the country.

Take action and make your voice heard!

ACLU of Kentucky
www.aclu-ky.org

That doesn't mean the ACLU will follow through with actual legal action to make the mouthbreathers, freakazoids, teabaggers and conservadems in the General Assembly pay for their unconstitutional and inhumane legislation, but it's a sign of life.

This is also inspiring:

Youth Rally Day

Please join us in Frankfort at noon in the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday, February 15th for our Youth Rally Day! We will hear from student activists and legislators about the importance of comprehensive sexuality education. Email Derek Selznick for more information.

Cool New Blog

Bookmark this and forward it to everyone you know.

International Planned Parenthood Federation - "From Choice, a World of Possibilities."

12/01/2010
Carmen Barroso
Regional Director
Welcome to the first post of IPPF/WHR’s blog, the Bikini. In it, we will cover all of the key sexual and reproductive health areas. We are launching our blog today in honor of World AIDS Day.

Your move, abstinence idiots.

Why Blaming the Sluts Doesn't Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Adolescent sexuality has always been more complicated than the just-say-no-until-marriage crowd pretends. And now we have an explanation of why blaming the girls for pregnancy doesn't work.

From The Nation:

Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women’s health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant. Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control. (“Control” may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.) Together with earlier small-scale studies and reports by those in the field, the new figures help fill out the picture of a long-known, but under-addressed, phenomenon now referred to as "reproductive coercion,” in which abusive partners subject young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. The new data confirm that we must expand not only our assumptions about who’s forcing whom to get pregnant but also our understanding of the meaning and causes of “unwanted” pregnancy. “If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause it,” says Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which has been a leading advocate on the issue.

A new study has found that among 71 women aged 18-49 with a history of intimate partner violence, 74 percent reported having experienced some form of reproductive control, including forced unprotected intercourse, failure to withdraw as promised or sabotaging of condoms. Women who became pregnant were coerced to proceed in accordance with the wishes of their partners, who in some cases threatened to kill them if they had an abortion. Study authors Ann Moore, Lori Frohwirth and Elizabeth Miller, MD, recommend that service providers in women’s health clinics ask questions designed to identify women who may be experiencing reproductive coercion, and should be aware that some women may need birth control (such as IUDs) that can be hidden from partners.

In the largest study of this phenomenon to date, “Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy,” published in the January issue of the journal Contraception, lead researcher Elizabeth Miller and others surveyed nearly 1,300 16- to 29-year-old women who’d sought a variety of services at five different Northern California reproductive health clinics. Among those who had experienced intercourse, i.e. who could be at risk of unintended pregnancy, not only did 53 percent of respondents say they’d experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner, but one in five said they had experienced pregnancy coercion; 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage, including hiding or flushing birth control pills down the toilet, intentional breaking of condoms and removing contraceptive rings or patches. These figures were consistent from clinic to clinic.

Read the whole thing.

Rally for Sex Education

Secular blessings and sincere thanks to the people who braved the Wrath of the Freakazoids to rally yesterday in favor of teaching facts about sex to children in school.

Advocates for sex education in the public schools rallied in the Capitol Thursday in support of legislation that would require schools teaching the subject to use a science-based curriculum.

Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, a Louisville Democrat who is sponsoring House Bill 119, said the measure is needed to protect teens not only from teenage pregnancies but also from sexually transmitted diseases.

“We're in the 21st century,” Marzian said in expressing outrage that sex education standards are not in place in the schools. “You would think teaching sex education was teaching voodoo or whatever.”

She said she decided to sponsor the legislation after her daughter, a public school teacher, told her of questions her students asked during health class that were based on wrong assumptions.

“It terrified me,” she said.

Sex education isn't currently required in public schools. Rep. Tom Burch, D-Louisville, said a 1980s law requiring it was repealed by the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act.

You will be shocked to hear that since abadoning facts and science in favor of abstinence-only and other myths, Kentucky's already inexcusably high rates of teen pregnancy and teen STDs have risen.

Read the whole thing.

Then tell your state representative and senator to support Marzian's bill.

Find toll-free numbers to call your legislators here.

Email your legislators here.

Find out who represents you in the house and senate here.

Let's Give the Result of Every Forced Pregnancy a Heisman

Attention Freakazoids and Other Assholes: When you insert yourself uninvited into the political discourse, you enter a free-fire zone. No holds barred. Thus:

We'll skip Caribou Barbie's incoherent droolings and move straight to the proposed Super Bowl commercial:

The ad will feature Heisman trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mom, and they’ll speak to the sanctity of life and the beautiful potential within every innocent child as Mrs. Tebow acknowledges her choice to give Tim life, despite less than ideal circumstances.

Ah, yes, Tim Tebow. The 21-year-old Heisman-Trophy-winning, most famous college football player in the country, who claims to be a virgin. In South Florida.

Tim Tebow is either a world-class liar or a record-breaking freak.

Unless, of course, we're playing by none-for-thee-but-all-for-me Freakazoid Rules, in which case "virgin" translates to "oral, anal, even vaginal don't count as long as I'm thinking about baby jeebus all the time."

I don't make many predictions, but I'll make this one:

Tim Tebow is going to be the biggest first-round draft bust since Ryan Leaf. If he lasts more than one season, it'll only be because whatever team is dumb enough to take him - hard to tell this year with the Rams, Bills and Bucs all competing for stupidest of them all - is too embarrassed or pathetic to replace him.

If For No Other Reason

An icon of the abstinence-only movement makes the definitive case for teaching actual sexual techniques to teens - before they ruin it for themselves.

Jesus' General has it:

But, now Kevin Jonas needs to serve as a role model for marriage. His recent statement about his wedding night doesn't accomplish this. If you missed it, here's what he had to say: "After we did it, I was kind of like, that's it?"

SNIP

Why go to all the trouble of getting married, if, in the end, it's like waiting in line three hours for a Big Mac.

I suspect his problem is ignorance. We don't teach kids the mechanics because it only encourages them to have sex. I bet no one sat him down and told him he needs to put his little unit into her woo woo hole. Without that knowledge, sex is just the weeping and vomiting--who enjoys that.

Read the whole thing.

There's a reason why indigenous cultures encouraged mature adults to initiate young adults into sex. It's obvious, but only in cultures that don't fear and hate sex in all its manifestations.

How Abstinence-Only Leads to Crime

OK, I get that their purity pledges didn't cover orgasms, but is there in Connecticut no porn?

A group of teenagers misunderstood a woman's screams during sex and, thinking they were stopping an assault, beat a 25-year-old man in her bedroom, police said.

As PZ writes:

Multiple tragedies here: not only was an innocent man beat up, but now everyone at school is so going to know those teenagers are like total virgins.