By Teresa Donovan 
Director, Massachusetts Physicians Resource Council 

December 10 -- The sexual revolution that began with widespread acceptance of the birth control pill in the mid-1960’s and that accelerated under the “mushroom cloud” of 1970’s acid rock has – in many ways – inflicted more casualties than any other revolution in history. 

During the past three decades, more than 35 million Americans have been killed by abortion.  At least 612,000 Americans have been infected with HIV, and more than 379,000 of these individuals have already died of AIDS.  Today the walking wounded include countless women suffering from post-abortion trauma and more than 12 million Americans infected annually with sexually transmitted diseases. 

False Messages 
Faced with the devastating fallout of “free love,” leading defenders of the sexual revolution urged young people to act “responsibly” while, at the same time, demanding taxpayer-funded sex education and so-called family planning services.  During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, however, as the “safe sex” message became a notorious example of dangerously false advertising, members of the latex lobby began touting merely “safer” sex.  The failure of comprehensive sex education and condom distribution programs was thus addressed with nothing more than a verbal sleight of hand. 

The Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts recently engaged in a similar act of legerdemain by demanding that our state Board of Education “continue to include comprehensive school health education as a core academic subject in our public schools.”  Stated more candidly, Planned Parenthood has demanded that comprehensive sex education be mandated in all Massachusetts public schools – even though sex education has never been a “core academic subject.”    In addition to calling on the Board of Education to impose mandatory sex education in grades K through 12, Planned Parenthood has also lobbied aggressively in support of three comprehensive sex education bills that are now stalled in state legislative committees. 

While individual curricula may vary, comprehensive sex education includes teaching on condoms and condom use, other contraceptive devices and drugs, abortifacients, abortion, and homosexuality. Such programs might mention the word “abstinence” before effectively undermining it, but they obviously do not promote abstinence as their exclusive purpose. Nor do they uphold abstinence until marriage as the expected standard of human sexual behavior. 

Tragic Results 
Despite millions spent on comprehensive sex education, and despite the fact that they constitute the most sexually “informed” generation in history, 8 million Americans under the age of 25 will be diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease this year alone.  Countless others will go undiagnosed.  Another 1 million teens will conceive children out of wedlock; and some 38% of those young mothers will have their babies aborted.  After 30 years of experimentation on children, comprehensive sex education has clearly flunked the credibility test. 

When any educational approach fails to achieve credible results, one might reasonably expect teachers and school administrators to correct the problem.  After all, a failing grade is a failing grade. 

Then again, maybe not in Massachusetts. 

Mandatory Sex Ed? 
By refusing to take definitive action through its new Student Learning Time Regulations, the Massachusetts Board of Education has effectively “passed” the comprehensive sex education problem on to a different level.  The regulations originally proposed by the Board in January would have required adequate learning time for students to master core academic subjects: mathematics, science and technology, history and social science, English, foreign languages and the arts.  Comprehensive health education -- and with it, Planned Parenthood-style sex education – would not have been included as a core subject under the proposed regulatory language. 

As amended and passed on April 9th, however, the new learning time regulations include – in addition to “core” subjects --  “other subjects approved by the school committee as part of the district’s program of studies.”   Simply put, the Board of Education has allowed local school districts to claim that comprehensive “health” education is an essential subject by refusing to declare, at the state level, that it is not.   Working at the district level, organizations such as Planned Parenthood will continue to be able to promote their vision for mandatory sex education in every public school. 

It’s Good Business 
Although the Board of Education vote this past spring did not produce a clear defeat for Planned Parenthood, neither did it offer a total victory.  Having failed to obtain a statewide mandate for comprehensive sex education through the Board of Education, Planned Parenthood must now focus its efforts on local school committees and the state legislature. 

Why the obsession with mandatory programs?  Consider Planned Parenthood’s  monetary interest:  in 1997-1998, Planned Parenthood staff members enjoyed a $15,224 contract for “training” Boston Public School teachers who use the ETR “Reducing the Risk” and “The Great Body Shop” curricula.  An internal Planned Parenthood memo leaked to local pro-life activists notes that “education plays a direct role in creating clients for PPLM’s clinic services” and thus in “assuring PPLM’s financial stability.” 

In sharp contrast to Planned Parenthood’s costly prescriptions for disaster, the Massachusetts Physicians Resource Council (MPRC) offers professional, 100% abstinence education at no cost to taxpayers or to our schools.  For more information about the Council and its abstinence resources, call MPRC Director Teresa Donovan at 617-928-0800. 

 

RETURN TO FRONT PAGE