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Well, except that isn't the "abstinence-only" perspective that the conservatives want. They don't want sex ed or contraception taught, they want only abstinence taught, it says it right in the name of the policy.
I'd be ok with everyone receiving the program I got in High School. It was a lot like the described:
First it went into the social aspect of sex. I remember they had a gotcha icebreaker task where they asked everyone what the first step to having consensual sex was out of a list. The answer was "eye contact." They talked about how intercourse took place after a sequence of events, (eye contact, conversation, seclusion, etc) which a person could get out of at any time by being vocal and making a choice to get out of the sequence.
A lot of "if you are pressured into having sex, here are some trusted adults you can go to."
Then went into the most common contraception methods available to teenagers, but actually read the warning labels on every box. Explained that none of them were fully effective at preventing STDs, not even condoms. None of them were 100% effective at preventing pregnancy.
Described economic and social status outcomes of pregnant teenage mothers. That pregnancy and childbirth changes you hormonally and "you don't really want to be like your mom yet, do you?"
We had to make posters describing STDs, symptoms and treatments. Presented them to the class.
I would call it abstinence-first education. It explained contraception thoroughly. The problem is, once you explain contraception thoroughly, it doesn't deliver on all the goods that abstinence can. Over a population, it is effective. As individuals, a 5/100 risk of pregnancy each year is still a lot of sexually active pregnant teens.
Property used contraception does work. The 5/100 is from people fucking it up. Also abstinence only education doesn't work you can look anywhere on earth and find that stats to back that up. Teens and young adults are going to fuck before getting married.
To your experience. It is surprisingly hard to find any info on abstinence-first education and perhaps the term is just not well defined enough to show up in the sea of competing abstinence only and full blown sex ed debates. I don't have a problem with that approach, except again, young attractive people are going to have sex with one another, unless you live in Korea, so you may as well teach them how to do it safely.
"Perfect use" condom is 2%, "Perfect use" Pill is .3%. Even "properly used" contraception means that there are thousands of women winding up pregnant from "perfect use." But how many people in a high school class are going to use it perfectly? "Typical use" is 14% and 7% respectively.
Things that are 100% like sterilization are unlikely options for teenagers. I suppose now IUDs might be more available.
I guess the idea is that, with education, "typical use' rates will go down? If so, my sex ed class covered explicitly how to put on a condom, the importance of taking a pill every day and that a single missed day means that the woman is more likely to get pregnant for the next month. Etc. They went very deep into the failure modes of each.
The biggest problem is that "Sex Ed" was one week. How many of your classmates on the internet are claiming that they never learned about the Vietnam war in school, or segregation, or whatever, when you remember very clearly that these topics were covered? I would prefer for Sex Ed to be a weekly thing all throughout Middle and High school.
I didn't. My parent's didn't. My grandparents didn't.
That being said, in hindsight I think my Sex Ed was trying to encourage oral. They went deep into dental dams and things.
How could a perfect use condom be 2%? It is a physical barrier. A perfect use condom can't be anything but 100% effective. Pill wise. I know zero people that have gotten pregnant on it unless "oops" I missed a few. Don't try to fuck with an already low fail percentage to justify abstinence stuff dude.
Also; no one in the history of sex has ever used a dental dam. This is detached from reality.
I can personally vouch that "99.9% effective when taken as directed" is not, in fact, 100%. If you take the word of an anonymous Internet stranger.
Was this you, or your wife?
My wife, but I believe her when she says she was taking them as directed, even at the same time daily. She wasn't very excited by the unexpected news (although we are both, in hindsight, glad to have the little one), and I was there when she was taking them pretty often.
Ah...Well. I'll take you at your word. But it doesn't take much - one miss on vacation, or a few forgotten, or another medication etc..My wife takes them on time every time and if she forgets we take a few days off. Again, I don't know of anyone having a kid on accident in our circle, and if odds were really 1% with perfect use and 10% real world there would be a few.
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