Fox News reported that the International Planned Parenthood Federation is advocating that children as young as 10 be provided with in-depth sex education, including extensive information on sexual pleasure.
“Stand and Deliver,” the report proposing this program, indicts religious groups that deny their young members access to sex information, including Catholics and Muslims. “Currently, many religious teachings deny the pleasurable and positive aspects of sex,” the report claims.
“Stand and Deliver” rides on the coattails of an August 2009 report published by the UN that encouraged the teaching of masturbation to students as young as five years old. Much like the UN report, “Stand and Deliver” has been greeted by protest from religious groups and conservative groups alike.
The hypocrisy of a group that purports to defend the “right to choose” actively denying “choice” to parents has not gone unnoticed. President of the Maryland-based Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, Michelle Turner, accuses Planned Parenthood of trying to “eliminate the role of mom and dad in the family.” Turner, like many others, believes that governments and private organizations should not make decisions about youth sexuality.
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Ed Mechmann, spokesman for New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, accuses Planned Parenthood of attempting to separate sex from traditional values and morality. Mechmann charges that the report’s imposition of a particular sexual mindset is “cultural imperialism.”
Youth sexuality has been a major concern amongst American parents. A report published by the Guttmacher Institute in January on sexual activity indicates that 46 percent of all 15-19 year-olds in the United States have had sex at least once. Undoubtedly, increased efforts to promote sexuality amongst teens and pre-teens will affect a rise in this number.
If so, it all works out in favor of Planned Parenthood, however. If they encourage sexual behaviors amongst America’s youth, they stand to profit from the inevitable repercussions of increased abortions and use of the morning after pill, which can be attained without parental consent in many states. Likewise, 21 states, as well as the District of Columbia, allow minors to acquire contraception without parental involvement.
Mechmann notes Planned Parenthood’s financial stake in the sex-education program. “The difference between Planned Parenthood and us is that we don’t make money off what we teach and say. They do. They make money off contraceptives and abortions,” he said. A sexually active teen who does not use contraceptives has a 90-percent chance of becoming pregnant within a year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Though 46 percent of teens are sexually active, the Guttmacher Institute reports “teens are waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. Some 13% of never-married females and 15% of never-married males aged 15-19 in 2002 had had sex before age 15, compared with 19% and 21% respectively, in 1995.” In a report published by the CDC in 2009, there is evidence that the delay in sexual activity amongst teens is a direct result of abstinence education. The the CDC report included 10 different studies conducted by six different authors. Two members of the CDC panel claim that the abstinence programs have created a significant decrease in teen sexual activity by at least one year.
Unfortunately, the National Abstinence Education Association reports that Congress and President Obama have neglected abstinence education programs in the 2010 budget.
“Stand and Deliver” claims that the role of sex education is to “recast” sexuality as a “positive force for change and development, as a source of pleasure, an embodiment of human rights and an expression of self.” Tell that to the millions of fetuses that are aborted annually, and to the growing number of 40-year-old grandparents of children born out of wedlock.
