Research Paper On Texas Abstinence-Only Education

Professor Ross

Government 2306

8 February 2015

Is Abstinence-only education the correct approach for Texas? Owning one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies in the Union, Texas has an abstinence only approach in sexual education to try to reduce pregnancies? In addition to this, Texas ranks first as being the top spender in sexual education, but can’t get solidified results out of its spending. Texas doesn’t teach anything about contraception, how the Texas Department of State Health Services has said that the mission of the program is to delay sexual actions among teenagers until they are old enough, and the use of abstinence only education to protect children from explicit content only to find out in their own way leads to curiosity

Abstinence is an extreme way of preventing sexual consequences. It’s easy for an adult to tell a teen to abstain from sex but that teen has outside factors trying to convince them to go against such teachings and they eventually engage in a sexual act unprotected because they were taught to abstain and not protect, leading to either a disease or pregnancy. As the old saying goes “Curiosity killed the cat.” So instead of Texas’ teens learning the hard way of their actions and potentially making a dire mistake, why not teach them to be safe with their actions, it makes more sense and holds more positive results. Teens nowadays are more progressive thinking than the generations before us. It’s now more common for sex to be a topic of conversation then it was forty plus years ago and teens are more open to talk about sex than past generations. “Texas lawmakers are still way out of step with common sense and public opinion. Some even argue that sex education gets teens so “hot and bothered” that they can’t wait to jump in the sack with each other. Check The Numbers”. People don’t like being told what do especially teens who feel they are treated like they don’t know a thing and are expected to act like adult but at the same time are treated like they aren’t intelligent and as if they were motivated by constant deviant thoughts. These different views between the generations developed an almost hostile relationship with the new Texas teens and the constantly reelected elitist right wing politicians who seem to forget the separation between church and