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"Are US teens at greater risk under Sarah Palin's ideology? Vice Presidential candidate's policies favoring abstinence-only-until-marriage programs promotes nationwide censorship of high school health education with unwise consequences." |
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Location: Blogs Dr. John's Personal Blog |
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| Posted by: host |
9/2/2008 |
The news that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter is pregnant brings up the hot button issue ofabstinence-only-until-marriage sex education and teenagers. Under the Alaska Governor's policies, teens in her state, and soon across America if she is elected, will not be allowed to hear the medically accurate facts on avoiding unplanned pregnancy or the risks of unprotected sex. Governor Palin favors censorship of this critical information and that spells trouble for US teens.
As an expert in teen sex issues and AIDS prevention education, I understand that hiding the truth from youth is counterproductive. In seven instances that I recall well, I had parents insist that their daughters be taken out of my AIDS information classes for fear their children would hear about sex and then want to do it. Yet, it was those uninformed minors who became pregnant during the school year. Most dropped out. Some wanted abortions. Yet, the students who stayed in my classes chose not to become pregnant and went on to graduate, attend college and raise healthy families in due time.
It is hypocritical for Governor Palin to oppose medically honest health education and then insist that unplanned teen pregnancies are acceptable and desirable under the "family values" that she promotes. Is Palin's censorship the right course or is factual information more important to the well-being of teens? We know that the abstinence-only-until-marriage approach fails by all accounts but is this what Palin wants to impose on all American teens? She says it is. |
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