A new report from Georgetown University suggests that public school children should be exposed to sexually explicit sex education at age 10 – while their views are still “malleable” – and that schools could lower STD and abortion rates by providing all girls capable of reproduction with “contraceptives and safe abortion” without “parental approval.”
The report promotes the sex ed and abortion-on-demand regimen for “Very Young Adolescents (VYAs),” defined as children between the ages of 10 and 14.
“Investing in very young adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health” was written by Susan M. Igras, Marjorie Macieira, Elaine Murphy, and Rebecka Lundgren of the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University and published in Global Public Health.
According to the researchers, it is unfortunate when children view their parents as the authority on sex.
“Younger adolescents see parents as a primary source of information and support, but most parents are ill-equipped to address issues related to puberty, SRH [sexual and reproductive health], and gender roles, and lack communication skills attuned to the young adolescents in their lives,” the researchers write. “Parental desire to protect their children is often exercised through behavioral regulation and monitoring.”
“Parents worry that their daughters’ emerging fertility and sexuality could lead to premarital pregnancy and keep their daughters close to home to ensure safety,” the report adds.
The researchers are also concerned that parents teach their children “gender-related ‘rules’” about behaviors appropriate to each sex, such as when “parents begin preparing their daughters for roles as future wives and mothers.”
In general, “parental and community norms serve to reinforce individuals’ behaviors and relationships that lead to poor adult SRH,” the authors conclude.
They also say parental authority violates “VYA rights,” such as denying children in the 10-14 age-range birth control and abortion.
“For those older VYAs who become sexually active, access to contraceptives and safe abortion remains largely unavailable due to regulations requiring parental approval or informal health care policies,” they state.
Their proposed public education courses are intended to combat that.
“If programs…are implemented at a time when adolescents are still malleable and relatively free of sexual and reproductive health problems and gender role biases, very young adolescents can be guided safely through this life stage,” the report concludes.
Parental groups said the proposals would harm children and insert the state in the unique relationship of a parent and child.
“Concerned Women for America supports reform of public education by returning authority to parents,” Alison Howard, communications director for Concerned Women for America, told LifeSiteNews. “We should be working toward restoring the quality of education to a level of excellence in academics without governmental mandates that are detrimental to parental rights.”
She warned that the report’s suggestions of furnishing preteens with birth control and possibly abortion, with or without parental consent, will have “serious emotional and physical consequences” for young people.
“There is no denying the fact that we are in the middle of an STD epidemic, with more than 20 million new STD cases every year – the majority of them affecting 15- to 25-year-olds. Yet supposedly responsible adults still encourage early sexual activity for young boys and girls,” she said.
Her view contrasts with that of leftist publications such as Think Progress, which complains that “just 18 states and the District of Columbia require sexual health courses to cover information about birth control. Instead of providing teens with medically accurate information about their bodies, many public school districts still rely on ‘abstinence-only’ courses.”
Sex education is sometimes provided by Planned Parenthood, although a series of exposes have uncovered the organization giving young teens potentially dangerous advice.
“Parents are fighting an uphill battle to protect their children from well-funded opponents like Planned Parenthood, who work within schools to infiltrate curricula with an agenda of increased sexual activity for America’s young people. Our schools and our children are not to be used as social experiments,” Howard told LifeSiteNews. “Concerned Women for America and an alliance of groups including Live Action, Alliance Defending Freedom, and the National Abstinence Education Association are working to draw attention to the emphasis and motives these groups have in targeting the most innocent among us with their message of sexual promiscuity and deterioration of parental involvement.”
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