Birth Control vs. Abstinence - Only in Sex Education - Comments

I totally agree, well writen my dear :)

Good job on the article!!! So many of my friends use to believe in the smoke pot and not get pregnant thing (I live in Florida) and are abstinence programs suck. They try to scare us and makes us afraid to have sex but it isn't working. A lot of people in my school last year (8th grade, age 13-14) had already lost their virginity. One teacher wasn't trying to scare us though he was like "I'm not gonna lie sex is great it's amazing just wait and it'll be better with someone you love"

My friend didnt no how to protect herself, and she ended up getting pregnant at 15 and she knows it was the biggest mistake of her life, she wishes she could take it back, and have her beautiful daughter when she was older and married.
I'm totally for the sex education and the details.
it doesnt matter when you actually have sex you should always know how to protect yourself.
And if people learn the details, like what happens when you actually have sex, they just might wait.
Great article, i just wish people could get this through thier head :]

What if we did both? What if we had one class or cores or assembly to focus only on abstinence. They could do the whole "Abstane or Die" "sign my paper" routine, scare the kids and what not, the whole nine yards. Then another time different people could come in touch on abstinence and birth control. That way students will see both sides of the issue and then they can decide for them selves what they choose. If they're old enough to be thinking of sex they are old enough to know the facts and decide.

No one is saying that [i]everyone[/i] loses their virginity at 16, just that a lot of teens do.
I agree with you 110% plus another 110. :D
Very well-written, and well argued.
*appluase*
:D

We're just beginning the sex unit in my Theology class (a little late, but that's Catholic school for you), so this was very well-timed. :)

I went to public school for the majority of my life, so I've always been taught both. Now, my textbook (and teacher, I suppose) wants me to believe that "condoms, birth control, vasectomies, and tube-tying procedures are against God's will because they detract from one of the two purposes of marriage: the procreation of life."

I hate to break it to you, Catholicism, but when I lose my virginity, you can bet your ass the guy will be wearing a condom.

It's also funny (scary?) to point out that this will be the first 'sex-ed' experience for many of the kids in my SOPHOMORE class. Sad, is it not?
I think so.

Nicely argued point.
Many kudos to you. :)

well i go to a private catholic school and what they do is scare the shit out of us!
seriously, they like, encourage us to go out there and have sex but they're like 'well, don't come running back to us when your private's fall off'. i think that the best method is teaching birth control but also teaching all of the grizzly desises that they DON'T protect against.

at my school in sex ed, we're taught about every different form of contraceptive, and everything about it.
but our teachers also tell us, that abstinence is good too, and that like - love and all that bullshit should be involved when you do have sex.
i'm pretty sure a lot of the teaching cirriculum in canada is like this, but some teachers tend to teach what they think is right.

I don't see why abstinence-only is still enforced. How long has it been known that if you tell a teen to do one thing, they'll do the opposite?

I discuss this with my mom all the time.
We had teen development in 8th grade.
They taught us everything...we even had to watch birthing videos and we had to carry around one of those babies for weekend.
Even through all of that, my county has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state of Georgia, or did have.

And not all of teens lose their virginity in 10th grade..
I was 18.
And two of my best friends still are....
so yeah...

My school only teaches Abstinence. Which one would think with such a sexually active student body, they'd teach both.

Abstinence only programs just make me think of Mean Girls. "Don't have sex. Or you [i]will[/i] get pregnant. AND DIE!" When I was taught Sex-Ed, 50% of the time the teacher was talking about all the available contraceptives, and then the other 50% of the time was spent talking about all the STD's and STI's you can get if you don't have some kind of protection. Maybe it's just my school, but if they started preaching about sex before marriage, the entire student body would've laughed their asses off.

And [b]panic at the disco,[/b] not every teenager loses the big "v" by the age of sixteen. I'm going to be a senior in three months and I've never had sex before.

Great article btw. :]

Some of the teachers at my school look down upon teenagers who have sex. The way I see it is, teen's who want to have sex and belive they are ready have the right to do it if they want. Its there body. The people who abstaine, thats there choise and they have the right to. But the one thing that gets on my nerves is when people who choose not to have sex, look down upon people who have had sex. Its no wrong if teenagers have sex, its a part of life. I think that the teachers should teach us how to be safe when we have sex and things like that, but they should also teach us to respect our body. Because lets face it. . . asking teenagers no not have sex, its gonna go in one ear and out the other most of the time.

I'm mad! My sex ed teacher told us that STD's could go right through condoms. Like, all of them. But now I find out it isn't true? I'm burying my chastity belt.

The way I see it, they can talk about abstinence all they want, it doesn't matter if they obviously push it... but they still need to talk about safe sex, because I mean they're gonna go and do it, it would be better for them to at least know about safe sex, and what it is and how to do it than not at all.

We didn't so sex ed at my school... we did the reproductive system in science (when we were 15/16, needless to say we all already got how it worked), but I guess being that it was a religious was probably why it never even got brought up... but still, I guess that's an example of how not being taught it at school isn't really an excuse to not know safe sex, cause I do and we weren't even taught to abstain. There was just nothing, it was practically taboo.

This article was lucid, well-argued and intelligent.
I applaud you for this. *claps* ^^
I also happen to agree with you 100% as the statistics prove it- telling somebody "don't do it- EVER!" is an idiotic idea. Teaching them "Make sure yuo have this if you really feel the need to..." is better.
I applaud again. *claps*

I agree as well. In my school they teach us how to stay safe. They honestly don't care if we go and have sex, they just want to make sure we're protected, which is why many people like our sex ed classes. But the bad thing is they teach it to seniors, which in my opinion is too late, most people lose their virginity at 16 as sophmores.

I think the schools should talk more about other options other than abstinence, because obviously few people follow it.

i can't agree more. in my child developement class they taught abstinace only and most of the students in that class had children already. i am a virgin, but i don't practice abstinace, i just haven't found the right guy yet. anyways, i love this artical, very well done, i coulnd't have done it better myself Kudos.

This is such an amazing article, and I completely agree with you. My school teaches abstinence-only, and when I was in health class learning sex-ed and about abstinence, it should have been obvious that abstinence wasn't working. Almost all the kids that I knew in that class had already had sex, and one was even pregnant.