Like all education in the United States, individual states set their own standards for sex education. Many states need to reform these standards. Only 39 states and Washington, D.C., require sex ed and/or HIV education, and it only gets worse from there.
A mere 17 states require that the information provided be medically accurate — five of which don’t even require sex education in classrooms. Additionally, five states require only providing negative information about homosexuality, and 19 states require that sex ed must teach that it is important to wait until marriage to have sex.
The last time the state of Michigan updated its sex-ed standards was 2004, nearly 20 years ago. It includes relics of the past, such as forbidding teaching that abortion is reproductive health and requiring “stressing abstinence from sex.” While Michigan requires HIV/AIDS education, it, along with 19 other states, does not require sex education. Family planning drugs or devices (e.g. condoms) cannot be handed out to students.
In fact, much of the content about contraceptives (labeled “risk reduction” in the summary) is left to the discretion of the school districts, which means that many Michigan students do not receive education about birth control options, leaving them vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy.
Sex education has positive effects on the health of students. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assesses that the benefits of providing quality sex ed to students include delaying sex, having fewer experiences with unprotected sex and avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancy. The CDC provides sex ed standards for fifth, eighth and 10th graders, which culminates in the 10th grade with discussions about contraceptive options (which includes condoms as well as abstinence), consensual sex and sexual health.
Leaving so much important information to the judgment of individual school districts means that the quality of sex ed varies widely across the state of Michigan. The required emphasis on the importance of abstinence and forbidding discussions of abortion as reproductive health in all Michigan public schools only works to limit the knowledge of Michigan students about birth control, which impacts their sexual health and safety going forward.
The sex education standards also make no mention of content regarding LGBTQ+ issues or sexual orientation in general. Considering that the percentage of Americans who identify as LGBTQ+ is growing, especially among the younger generations, it is imperative that such information be taught in Michigan’s public schools, which have over 1.5 million students.
While Republicans tend to prefer including abstinence and Democrats were more likely to prefer including discussions about birth control, consent and sexual orientation, both Republicans and Democrats want some form of sex ed to be taught in the classrooms. But it’s difficult to get state lawmakers to be proactive in fighting for sex education due to the topic’s controversial nature. Even in progressive states, it can be difficult to implement sex ed reform; in California, comprehensive sex ed wasn’t required until 2016.
In states with a Republican-controlled branch of government, like Michigan, implementing sex education reform can be even more difficult. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans think that premarital sex is morally unacceptable, compared to 27% of Democrats, leading many to oppose material that could be seen as encouraging students to have sex.
Not only does comprehensive sex education help to reduce rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, but preaching abstinence doesn’t even help to reduce the rates of teenagers having sex. Studies have shown that abstinence-only education does not delay sex, but instead leaves students unsafe and at risk for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
But few topics are as important to the Republican Party as abortion, which is the second-most important issue for Republicans when deciding which presidential candidate to vote for. States that emphasize abstinence in sex education have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and teen birth. Thirty-one percent of teenagers who get pregnant have an abortion; access to birth control dramatically reduces pregnancy and abortion among teenagers. While free and accessible birth control is a separate issue from sex education, it is possible that teen abortion rates would decrease if all states included a judgment-free discussion of contraceptives in their sex education and diminished the importance placed on abstinence. This could help to reduce abortion rates, something that Republicans certainly support.
Michigan sex education needs to be updated. Stressing abstinence and making discussion of contraceptives discretionary only makes Michigan students unprepared for sex whenever they choose to have it. Considering that sex is a natural and vital human function, it is ignorant to assume that abstinence is a helpful way of teaching teenagers about sex, especially since it has been proven that comprehensive sex education reduces rates of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Michigan, along with the rest of the country, must update its sex education standards in order to educate its students on safe sexual health and experiences.
Lydia Storella is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at storella@umich.edu.