iency syndrome, and other associated health problems; and
—- each student has the power to control personal behavior and to encourage students to base action on reasoning, self-esteem, and respect for others.
Louisiana also requires that all public high schools that offer home economics classes must also provide “parenthood education” which must includes the topics of family living and community relationships, the consequences of the lack of adequate prenatal care, home management, and the responsibilities of parenthood.
In addition, Louisiana now requires adoption awareness be included in any health education or appropriate class. This includes instruction on “the benefits of adoption for families wishing to add a child, for potential adoptees, and for persons who are pregnant or who have a child for whom they are unable to care.”
According to the Louisiana Handbook for School Administrators, students must be taught “the principle modes by which communicable diseases, including, but not limited to, HIV infection, are spread and the best methods for the restriction and prevention of these diseases.”
Here’s another example – the state of Arkansas, where the 2005 and 2006 rate remained at 14.7:
Arkansas received $2,110,782 in federal funds for
abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in Fiscal Year 2006.1
Arkansas Sexuality Education Law and Policy
Arkansas law does not require schools to teach sexuality education or sexually transmitted disease (STD)/HIV education. If a school offers sexuality or STD/HIV education, it must stress abstinence. Arkansas maintains curriculum standards for physical and health education; however, these do not include specific guidelines pertaining to the content of sexuality education courses. According to the Department of Education, course content is left to the discretion of the local school districts and varies widely from school to school. There is also no system of evaluation to monitor the subject matter covered in health education classes across the state.
School-based health clinics may teach sexuality education and may also prescribe and distribute contraceptives with written parental consent; however, no state funds may be used to purchase condoms or contraceptives. These school-based health clinics must maintain records of the number of condoms and other contraceptive devices distributed and prescribed, as well as the number of pregnancies and STDs in the school. This information must remain confidential. Clinics may not give information about abortions or refer students to where they might find such information.
Arkansas does not require parental permission for students to participate in sexuality or HIV/AIDS education nor does it say whether parents or guardians may remove their children from such classes.
Those are just a couple of examples of many you’ll find at the SIECUS website, where you’ll see that states which receive “abstinence-only” funding don’t always limit their sex ed programs to being strictly about abstinence. It varies from state to state, with some of the states doing as Arkansas does by leaving it up to local school officials as to what to teach, while others operate primarily off of state guidelines, which also vary on how far school districts can go in what they teach to young people about sex, and what they should “stress” more: abstinence or an emphasis on ways to have safe sex.
It’s interesting – but not surprising – that The Usual Suspects jumped on the opportunity to blame abstinence-only education after the release of the CDC study results. But what Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and other like-minded ‘progressives’ in her ‘enlightened’ circles count on their supporters not doing is carefully reviewing and understanding the statistics released on Wednesday, and judging by the knee-jerk reactions from the usual corners, she has nothing to worry about on that front.
For example, as I noted earlier, California accepts no Title V funding for abstinence-only programs in the public schools, but as reported yesterday by the LAT, the teen birthrate