The contrast with Continental Europe was striking. Not only did the Scandinavian countries teach comprehensive sex ed, starting in elementary school, but free or low-cost contraceptive services and information were readily available in most of Western Europe. Youngsters received sex information from parents, grandparents, schools, healthcare providers and the media. Massive, long-term, government-funded educational campaigns used television, radio, discos, billboards, pharmacies and clinics to give youngsters explicit portrayals of responsible sexual behavior. Even Britain, with sexual politics almost as fraught as those of the United States, had contraceptive ads on TV in the late 1980s (one showed a young woman insisting that her paramour don his "rubber-johnnies" if he wanted "humpy-pumpy"); and in 1999 the British government sponsored a "Lovelife" website for teens with explicit, nonjudgmental information about condoms and safer sex.

Adolescent pregnancy and birthrates in the United States did decrease slightly by the late 1990s, but they remained by far the highest among industrialized nations. For young women 15-19, the US pregnancy rate was 101 per 1,000 in 1995, down from a peak of 117 in 1990. The teen childbirth rate was 52 per 1,000--thirteen times higher than the Netherlands rate and six times higher than that of France. In a 1998 tally of childbirth rates for young women through age 19, Bangladesh and the Ivory Coast ranked highest, followed by India, Kenya and eight other Third World nations. Next came the United States, with a teen childbirth rate higher than any European country and many non-Western ones as well.

Of course, Europe does not have the severe right-wing opposition to sex- and contraceptive education that besets the United States. Indeed, it is one of the ironies of European life that Italy, overwhelmingly Catholic and home to the Vatican, has the lowest birthrate on the Continent. The United States, by contrast, is sexually schizophrenic: copious information about anatomy, contraception, orgasm, masturbation and oral sex techniques is available to youngsters from mass circulation magazines and educational nonprofits (some of it, like the popular SEX, ETC. newsletter and website, is even written and edited by teens), but government continues to preach abstinence-only and to withhold straightforward sexual information from those youngsters who are least likely to find alternative sources.

Beyond America's sexual schizophrenia, though, there are structural reasons for our peculiarly obtuse approach to sexuality and youth. The extreme decentralization of public education in the United States not only makes possible but invites local culture-war battles over curriculum, from sex ed to school plays with vulgar words to novels by Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. In other nations, curriculum is more centralized and uniform, and disputes over pedagogy are correspondingly muted. Here, sex ed remains a hot political issue rather than a sober matter of public health. As Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy has said: "You start out talking about condoms in this country, and you end up fighting about the future of the American family. Teens just end up frozen like a deer in the headlights."

The irony is that surveys consistently show an overwhelming majority of American parents want public schools to offer comprehensive sex ed, including discussion of contraception, abortion, homosexuality and safer sex. Even the White House Office of National AIDS Policy last year expressed "grave concern" that "there is such a large incentive to adopt unproven abstinence-only approaches."

As Congressional reauthorization of abstinence education looms, reproductive rights, youth and anticensorship advocates have begun a campaign to draw attention to the deficiencies in Congress's ideological approach to sexuality education. Participants include Advocates for Youth, SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, the Pro-Choice Resource Center, the Center for Law and Social Policy and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), whose concerns center around the First Amendment implications of a law that promotes a narrowly partisan message and suppresses valuable, even lifesaving information. In January NCAC circulated a joint statement of opposition to the abstinence law, for endorsement by other anticensorship groups, while the reproductive rights contingent worked on crafting model legislation, tentatively titled the Family Life Education Act, that would fund comprehensive sexuality education as an alternative to the distortions and omissions of abstinence-only. These groups emphasize, as they have ever since the Sex Respect phenomenon put them on the defensive, that comprehensive sex ed also teaches abstinence, but not to the point of denying reality or depriving kids of health information. As SIECUS's public policy director, William Smith, says, the proposed act "will at least level the playing field and restore some sanity to the federal investment in sexuality education."

But the forces of sanity will have an uphill battle. Most legislators are reluctant even to hint that any message other than unmitigated chastity is acceptable for youth. In 1999, without serious opposition, Representative Istook secured $20 million for abstinence pedagogy above and beyond the '96 funds (these grants will go directly to qualifying projects rather than to the states). He obtained another $30 million for fiscal year 2001. This political landscape is unlikely to change until elected officials are persuaded to focus their energies on developing a sane sexual health policy instead of indulging in the easy pleasures of symbolic rectitude. James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth sums up: "It is a classic case of US politicians putting their agendas before the health and needs of our young people. And it has to stop."

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.