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Alex Morgan is a fourth-year psychology major with minors in philosophy and neuroscience in the Honors College at The University of Maine. These are her views and do not express those of the University of Maine System or the University of Maine. Alex wrote this column at the invitation of the Maine chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications. Members’ columns appear in the BDN every other week.
The command, “Don’t get pregnant,” was the extent of my sexual education.
I was 10 years old when my parents sat me down to explain my big-sister figure, just 16, was pregnant. At the time, I had a rough understanding of what this meant; based on movies and context clues, I knew she must have had sex to have been pregnant. I didn’t grasp the gravity of what it meant to have a baby or even how sex worked.
Aside from media and the eventual rise of the internet, I never had a formal sex education until I willingly enrolled in one in college, because in the state of Maine it wasn’t required.
Our lack of sex education is an incredibly common experience across the U.S. and should be taken more seriously after the dismantlement of Roe v. Wade with President-elect Donald Trump returning to office. Trump’s return comes with threats to limit contraceptive and abortion access, leaving sexual health a risky practice without these protections.
State-by-state regulations of sex education vary vastly, with only 30 states requiring sex education in some form. Even then, the education within these required states varies dramatically. Some states like Arizona and Florida endorse federally funded abstinence-only sex education that appears based on the philosophy that if youth are told explicitly incorrect and medically inaccurate information, maybe they just won’t have sex.
Not only does this type of education spread misinformation, increase risk of pregnancy and STIs, and exclude the LGBTQ+ community, but it also fundamentally imposes American Christian values in our public school systems. The moral panic that sex should be reserved for marriage is reflected in abstinence-only sex ed.
However, there are states, like Maine, that refuse this funding. Maine supports “comprehensive family life education” with recent addendums encouraging affirmative consent. Historically, we lack in support for LGBTQ+ students curious about gender identity and sexual orientation and don’t meet National Sex Education Standards. Anecdotally, just asking your fellow Mainers about what kind of sex ed they received will undoubtedly give inconsistent answers across the board. In the last legislative session, Maine could have made strides with a bill ( LD 254) that sought to invest $500,000 into providing comprehensive sex education, expanding curricula to include LGBTQ+ health issues and parental engagement, all taught under sexual health-trained educators. However, this legislation did not pass.
But why does having comprehensive sex education matter now? In June 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the protection of the right to abortion care under the United States Constitution returning the decision on abortion restrictions to the states. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the end of the war on reproductive rights. Recent proposed legislation speaks to criminalizing the sale of morning-after pills, restricting access to birth control and other contraceptives, and establishing an abortion surveillance state. South Carolina lawmakers have reintroduced legislation that would rule abortion to be homicide, meaning having an abortion could lead to the death penalty.
The fact of the matter is teenagers are going to have sex whether or not you find it morally wrong. The stakes of inadequate sex ed have always been high. However, if policymakers in Washington ignore and don’t follow the evidence, the stakes become dangerous, threatening the well-being of our young people.
What can you do? Urge policymakers in Congress to stop funding abstinence-only sex education. On a more local level, have tough conversations with your kids; studies show open dialogue with your kids limits risky sexual behavior. Not comfortable with that? Don’t opt them out of their school’s sex education programs. Urge your legislators in Maine to take action to support comprehensive sex education in this next legislative cycle.
We must arm our youth with the knowledge of their options, support them through identity discovery, and teach them safe ways to have sex. Destigmatizing sex, reaffirms that it’s a natural part of life. All of these lessons can be provided with proper age-appropriate, sex education programs.