Anti-Sex Ed Curriculum Makes the List: Don't Blame Obama, Blame the System
Taken from RH Reality Check. Written by Norman A. Constantine, Eva S. Goldfarb, and Danny Ceballos.
A recently updated list of federally approved “evidence-based” teen pregnancy prevention programs has been causing a stir. This list specifies the programs that are eligible for federal funds and serves as the cornerstone of President Obama’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative. Among the three programs making the list for the first time is the Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage program Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education. Our friends and fellow advocates in the adolescent sexual health promotion field have denounced this program as medically inaccurate, biased, fear- and shame-based, and otherwise inappropriate for the classroom. Here we all agree, completely. A program like this has no place in our schools and communities, and especially not with government funding.
But we take issue with criticisms of the Obama administration for “backroom deals and secrecy,” “political expediency,” and “blatant hypocrisy,” among other barbs and arrows recently launched by understandably frustrated advocates. Rather than blaming Obama for this unfortunate development, we’d all do better to recognize that it was the result of a fundamentally flawed system operating according to explicit agreed-upon rules—a system sorely in need of review and repair.
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