Standards advocated for sex education

Women lawmakers want to see guidelines based on science

Legislative women's groups are backing standards for teaching sex education in the public schools.

The Hawaii Women's Coalition is pushing a bill to require public schools to provide "medically accurate sex education," saying the best way to decrease teenage pregnancies and sexual disease is to give teenagers full details.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a center for sexual health education, Hawaii has the 12th-highest teenage pregnancy rate in the nation, with about 3,600 teen pregnancies each year. Annelle Amaral, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood, blames it on a lack of education about contraceptives.

All public schools are required to teach sex education classes in grades 7-12, but state officials say not all schools conduct the classes for each grade each year.

"There is no standard for teaching sex education," said Rep. Marilyn Lee (D, Mililani-Mililani Mauka), a member of the Women's Legislative Caucus.

The bill would require all public school sex education to be uniformly scientific, and give teachers a standard by which to teach. It also would require state-funded sex education to include lessons on both abstinence and contraception, as well as the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

The bill says medically accurate sex education should be defined by peer-reviewed journals and recognized organizations with expertise in the field.

The Department of Health policy is currently focused on STDs and family planning. But most grants and funding come from what the state labels "abstinence-only until marriage" programs, which limits the range of some lessons, cutting out topics like abortion, masturbation and safe premarital sex. Abstinence-only sex education received $866,551 in federal funding in Hawaii in fiscal year 2003.

"People think that (educators) talking about it causes them to do these things," Amaral said, adding that's not the case.

Others disagree.

There is a basis for concern that sex education increases student sexual activity, said Kelly Rosati, executive director of the Hawaii Family Forum. "People wouldn't be aware about their kids learning about masturbation, and parents would be alarmed."

Rosati, also a lobbyist for the Catholic Conference, said requiring medically accurate sex education is "unnecessary, because abstinence is the surest way to avoid pregnancy."

But Amaral counters that such topics need to be addressed. Critics of medically accurate sex education ask whether it means they are going to talk about masturbation and sex, Amaral said, "and those are the facts of life. Yeah, we are going to talk about these things."

Oregon, California and New Jersey have begun teaching guidelines of conduct for sexually active students; "sex respect," which includes contraception use, STD prevention and anti-sexual abuse methods; and abortion.

"If teachers want to talk about sex education, they can," Amaral said, "but they have to bring in everything on their own."