While I wasn't alive in the 1980s, my mother was. From his childhood he remembers disco, the Soul Train, Regan, the war on drugs and, above all, abstinence and sex education programs. In the 1980s, sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS and teenage pregnancy were a big problem, in fact “between 1974 and 1980, the pregnancy rate for all women aged 15 to 19 increased by 8 .2%” (CDC), but this was not the beginning of the abstinence-only mandate in schools across the country. The fact that teenagers were having sex was. So when I went to my mother at age twelve to ask her a series of questions about birth control and sexual health, her response was something like, “Don't they teach you anything in school?” to which I replied “they teach us what to be afraid of”. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Abstinence-only sex education is the latest addition to a seemingly long list of attempts to prevent, especially young women, from engaging in sexual activity because it would be seen as “damaged goods.” But this defamatory rhetoric was originally used by the United States government during World War I against soldiers to warn them of the dangers of syphilis and gonorrhea. A report from the Children's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor in 1919 stated that soldiers would be better off if they received sexual instruction in school (Cornblatt). The first sex education booklets contained information on nutrition, religion and the sin of masturbation and were distributed by the Catholic church. Chicago had the first school in U.S. history to have a comprehensive sex education program, but it was short-lived when the Catholic Church became aware of it. Much like the tactics of the Catholic church, abstinence-only sex education has not been very productive. While it is clear that the abstinence-only mandate had good intentions, ending it and replacing it with a factual and informative sex education curriculum that would open the door for U.S. families to have better conversations about sex and make it less of a topic taboo in society. Since World War I, sex education has become more about scare tactics than information, and all that has changed is the audience. Instead of talking about soldiers, it's teenagers. Most inexperienced teenagers already have a lack of sexual knowledge and take sex lessons in hopes of learning something about their bodies. In the United States, abstinence-only or abstinence plus sex education programs are the majority and do little to answer the real questions teens have about sex in a nonjudgmental or scary way. The United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy among all developed countries (Stranger-Hall). Many people, especially teenagers, don't know that there are more than twenty forms of birth control, including abstinence, that protect against sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. . Just to name a few: the pill (male and female), the depo-provera vaccine, the condom and the female condom are the most common for regular birth control. There is also Plan B or other emergency contraceptives that can be used by women up to 72 hours after unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy. In recent years they have beenLaws have also been passed – in Oregon, Washington and a few other states – allowing people of any age to purchase one of these forms of contraception. People don't know this because it's against the curriculum of abstinence programs. Candie's Foundation is one of the most influential abstinence-enforcement programs because it is supported by several mainstream celebrities and politicians such as actresses Hilary Duff and Hayden Panettiere and politician Sarah Palin. daughter Bristol. Somehow Bristol Palin, a teenage mother of two and pro-abstinence spokesperson, is still traveling the country going to high schools and telling students how important it is to abstain until marriage, as well as promoting romantic notions of marriage and spreading scientifically inaccurate information (Green). Strange as she herself is not married. The Bristol Palin situation is an all-too-real representation of how harmful abstinence-only sex education programs have been to teenagers. Studies have shown that these programs have “increased the rate of teen pregnancy as well as the rate of sexually transmitted diseases among teens” (Stanger-Hall). So what gave rise to the abstinence-only mandate? In 1981, when Reagan took office as president, he repealed forty health and welfare programs under Title by adolescents and individuals affected by poverty. Repealing these rules would not only make it difficult for poor minority women to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, but it would also harm sexually active teenagers, which was precisely the intent. Observing the teenage pregnancy rate of the 1970s, a group of conservative politicians and doctors, also known for being against women's and gay rights and against school desegregation, got together and began propaganda against teen sex . One such individual was Dr. Ray Short who argued that "sterilization by pill, IUD, and venereal disease was nature's way of punishing young women and girls for engaging in premarital sex." He also consistently stated that “young women who engage in sexual activity are damaged goods and will not find a partner. If by chance they find a partner, they will be more likely to cheat on their spouse.” This is the same shameful rhetoric that has been used since the early 1900s. These doctors and political figures wanted to shift the blame for sexual attraction onto girls when in reality boys were just as guilty. Another issue that emerged during these discussions was rape. Girls were, and some say still are, accused of “male passions” (Ehrlich). Aside from abstinence-only sex education, there are other methods that have been much more effective. Abstinence plus sex, for example, provides students with information about healthy relationships and all the different sexually transmitted diseases one might contract, but it fails to provide students with knowledge about birth control and safe sex practices because it still mandates strong abstinence. Another program that has been known to work well for students is comprehensive sexuality education. This method has been shown to result in “increasing the age for sexually active adolescents, preventing disease, preventing sexual assault, and preventing unplanned teen pregnancies” (Green). Access too.