RMC Responds: The Commonsense of Abstinence Plus Comprehensive Sex Education

This week our facebook page saw some great conversation in response to a post about a local school district fighting disease by reforming their sex education program. One commenter said, “In all reality this is the responsibility of the parents not the schools!!!”

And another responded:

“Yes it should but sadly it doesn’t happen or bad information is passed along. This is why there is a need for this subject in schools. You would be stunned to learn what gets passed along as “information”.

These commenters bring up an issue we hear regularly from our supporters – that sex education should be a personal family issue. As the Party of personal responsibility we fully understand that personal decisions like this should ideally be left to the family. But as the second commenter noted, this does not always happen, and often the misinformation young people get on this topic is passed among them to treacherous results.  And if we are serious about preventing unwanted pregnancy, teen pregnancy and abortion we need to look at the facts.

The facts are that the US has an alarmingly high rate of teenage pregnancy and STI’s.  Every year new STI’s cost the US an estimated $16 billion dollars.

We know that abstinence-plus comprehensive sex education is the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and lower the rate and incidence of abortion nationwide. Such comprehensive education focuses on the 100% success rate of abstinence to prevent unwanted pregnancy and disease but includes age appropriate and factual information about all methods of birth control.

In order to ensure that young Americans are able to take responsibility for their decisions, they must be armed with the best information.  Investing in these comprehensive educational programs will empower our young people to make educated decisions as well as decrease long-term financial costs related to unintended pregnancies, Medicaid expenditures, and harmful STIs.

As fiscally-conservative Republicans, we prioritize smart investment in sound policies that solve problems AND create long term cost savings to families and tax payers. 

Click here to learn the truth about abstinence-only sex education

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