Panel discusses effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education

Kindergarteners in the Monroe County Community School Corporation learn that AIDS is transmitted through body fluids.

Members of the League of Women Voters of Bloomington and Monroe County learned this, and how sex education is taught throughout MCCSC students’ entire education, at a panel discussion Wednesday in the Monroe County Public Library auditorium.
League members and attendees also discovered the ways various organizations in Monroe County offer a chance for teens and adults to learn how to protect their bodies from sexually transmitted infections.

Representatives from the Monroe County Health Department, Bloomington Hospital, Planned Parenthood of Indiana, Edgewood High School and MCCSC described the roles they play in the sex education of students and answered audience-submitted questions.

The League, which is an organization dedicated to advocacy and voter education, decided to investigate Monroe County’s sex education methods in light of a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which detailed a marked increase in STIs among 15- to 19-year-olds in Monroe County.

At the beginning of the discussion, each panelist briefly detailed what they do.
Though sex education begins in kindergarten at a very limited level, students are not taught about contraception until 10th grade.

“We teach abstinence-based health,” said Shelia Evans, the administrator of Community Health Education Program at Bloomington Hospital. “We promote and encourage abstinence, but we also talk about risk reduction.”

Federal funding for sex education is restricted to abstinence-only education – that is, if a school wishes to teach students about contraception or risk reduction, that school loses its funding.

Because MCCSC schools go beyond abstinence-only, they lose their federal funding. The educators on the panel said teaching the extra information is essential, however.
“We realized that we can’t just teach abstinence,” said Brian Rosenburgh, health and physical education teacher at Edgewood High School. “The kids won’t listen to it.”
Bloomington North High School senior Jake Axsom affirmed that MCCSC students benefited from the more-than-abstinence-only sex education.

“Students react strongly to it and would like to go further into it,” he said.

However, Jennifer Staab, healthy schools coordinator for MCCSC, explained that sex education ends at grade 10 for several reasons – the lack of federal funding as well as the need to complete Core 40 classes for graduation.

According to a sex survey, half of Monroe County’s high school seniors have been sexually active, Staab said. However, Staab believes that number is even higher in reality.

“Only 10 percent of students took the survey because it requires permission from both the student and parent,” she said.

Evans and Larisa Niles-Carnes, the Bloomington educator of Planned Parenthood of Indiana, expressed a desire as health educators to be able to teach sex education from a complete health stance and not be challenged by values issues coming into the equation.

“I think my wish for this whole topic would be that we would be more comfortable talking about it,” Evans said. “I wish that we could take all of that away and say ‘This is our body. We need to keep our body safe.’”

Niles-Carnes, who is the educator for 22 counties in southern Indiana, expressed frustration at people’s preconception of Planned Parenthood.

“Especially for me, people think I’m going to go tell them how to do it,” she said. “It’s frustrating when I’m told I can’t do something because they think I’m going to teach values.”

Some audience members said they felt a benefit from learning how each organization played its part in the sex education of Monroe County youth.

“I think I did walk away feeling better about this community’s sex education,” said League member Deborah Meader. “Abstinence-only sex education is dangerous. The simple solution doesn’t always work.”