Help Planned Parenthood prevent unintended teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.
REAL Sex Education
Planned Parenthood is working with the federal and state governments to ensure access to real sex education programs that give young people the reliable, accurate information they need to make responsible decisions and stay healthy.
Teens Need REAL Sex Education
The United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world. In addition, while young people ages 15 to 25 in the United States make up only one-quarter of the sexually active population, they contract about half of all of the country’s19 million sexually transmitted infections and almost one-quarter of the estimated 56,300 new HIV infections.
Teens need medically accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive information to help them both postpone sexual activity and protect themselves if they become sexually active.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than three million teen girls have a sexually transmitted infection. That's at least one in four. Half of young people will contract a sexually transmitted infection by age 25. In addition, some 750,000 teenagers in the United States will become pregnant this year. The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs has been a $1.5 billion failure, and our young people have paid the price.
The best way to help teens prevent sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies is to provide them with comprehensive, medically accurate, age-appropriate information. Recent national polling shows that 73 percent of all voters — including parents — strongly favor requiring public schools to teach comprehensive sex education, which includes information about abstinence as well as contraception, and how to avoid sexually transmitted infections, such as HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, only about five percent of American students receive sex education that covers all the information they need.
Good News!
President Obama’s 2010 budget will end funding for ineffective abstinence-only programs and provide $178 million for evidence-based sex education programs that prevent teen pregnancy. President Obama’s budget makes clear that the government shouldn’t waste federal dollars on programs that don’t reduce the number of teen pregnancies or keep teens healthy and safe. Instead, the Obama administration is determined to invest in evidence-based sex education programs that have proven to help prevent teen pregnancy.