Sex education does not work!
Teaching children that sex is separate from marriage has led to untold misery.
Polly Toynbee claims the small reduction we have seen in teenage conception rates “may be partly due to easier emergency contraception from local pharmacies”. However, international studies have consistently shown that increased access to the morning-after pill has reduced neither abortion nor unintended pregnancy rates.
Our own study, which Toynbee dismisses as “a spurious story” and “evidence-proven nonsense”, reveals that not a single primary care trust was able to cite any evidence that the confidential provision of the morning-after pill in pharmacies has contributed to a reduction in under-16 conception rates.
This may sound counterintuitive. After all, if the morning-after pill works at all, it stands to reason that it does prevent at least some unwanted pregnancies from developing, and thus prevents at least some abortions. However, there is also evidence that the ready availability of contraception results in some young people becoming sexually active who would not otherwise have done so.
For almost a year following Victoria Gillick’s appeal court victory in 1984, under-16s were unable to obtain contraception without parental consent. The sex-education establishment and contraceptive industry protested that teenage pregnancy rates would rocket. But they didn’t. While under-16 attendances at family-planning clinics went down by a third, teenage conception rates remained the same, suggesting that the restriction on contraceptive services to under-16s led to a fall in underage sexual activity.
But not everybody regards less teenage sexual activity as a positive outcome. Some are wedded to the notion of “children’s reproductive-health rights” - a euphemism for the “right” of children to engage in unlawful sexual intercourse, with confidential access to contraception and abortion. Toynbee herself is dismissive of any attempt to discourage teenage sex, and even goes so far as to say: “It is good news … that more pregnant teenagers are opting for abortions.”Bearing in mind the long-term trauma experienced by many women after an abortion, this is hardly a cause for celebration.
“Abstinence teaching doesn’t work,” Toynbee asserts, while sex education “taught well” can serve as the panacea for any number of social ills. But this all prompts the question as to what “work” and “taught well” mean.
The organisations demanding compulsory sex education in all schools share a strong hostility towards teaching children the positive benefits of saving sex for marriage. Separating sex from marriage has not only led to high rates of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and abortions, but is also a major contributory factor in divorce and family breakdown, with all the associated human misery and adverse social consequences. Young people need to hear that there is a better way.
Schools must remain accountable to parents who bear the primary responsibility for their children’s care and nurture; and parents must retain the freedom to withdraw their children from sex-education lessons they believe will do more harm than good.
Backlash over sex education failings
Teenagers are being taught sex education so badly in schools that many are left in complete ignorance about how to avoid sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy.
A letter to The Times today from leading children’s organisations, sexual health experts and eight members of the Commons Health Select Committee, calls on the Government to make relationship teaching a statutory part of the national curriculum.
The experts say that research published today highlights the longstanding failure of schools and how it is contributing to the country’s sexual health crisis.
Of more than 20,000 teenagers in England questioned about sex education, more than half rated the teaching in school as poor, very poor or merely average. Only a quarter said that it was good.
Nearly half of those surveyed by the UK Youth Parliament said that they had never been taught about the effects of teenage pregnancy and would not know where to find their local sexual health clinic. More than half (55 per cent) of all 12 to 15-year-olds, and 57 per cent of girls between the ages of 16 to 17 had not been taught how to use a condom, despite the Government’s recommendations, published seven years ago, that this should be taught in all schools. The majority of pupils over the age of 17 reported not having received any information about personal relationships at school.
The letter, signed by the chief executives of the NSPCC, the Brook pregnancy advisory service, the Family Planning Association and the Terrence Higgins Trust, states: “These figures may go some way to explaining disproportionately high rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections in this country.”
Figures from the Health Protection Agency reveal that among 16 to 19-year-olds, diagnoses of herpes rose by 13 per cent and those of genital warts increased by 6 per cent between 2005 and last year. Government figures also show that the UK still has the highest levels of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe. For every 1,000 births between 2000 and 2005, 27 were to under-19s. It was just eight in France.
The Youth Parliament is calling for sexand relationship courses to be made a statutory part of personal, social and health and economic education. At present sex education is a statutory part only of the science curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds.