Remarks to School Board in support of pulling 2 FLE pamphlets

5/12/05

When the sex ed controversy was beginning in the 1960 & 70’s, it was predominantly a philosophical argument on how to stop teen pregnancy.  Originating from the concern about increasing teenage pregnancy, the issue of sex ed immerged with one side believing that if contraception was provided that it would solve the problem and the other side concerned that the availability of contraception would increase the sexual activity and consequently the teenage pregnancy.  When an issue has been on going for a long time, those on either side of the issue often stop listening to each other assuming that they know the other’s philosophy and do not need to hear it again.  While this issue certainly has a philosophical element to it, it is no longer a philosophical discussion.  We are no longer talking about philosophical or hypothetical situations.  The primary risk has shifted and those risks are real and concrete.  We need to get past the 1970 paradigm when the concern was teen pregnancy and there were two predominant venereal diseases that could be cured with a shot of penicillin.  Today we have sexually transmitted diseases that can kill you or lead to cancer that can kill you.  After 40 years of social experimentation, we know about the mental health and emotional risks associated with sexual activity.  Since the negative repercussions of teenage sexual activity has moved past just teen pregnancy to epidemic levels of sexually transmitted disease, severe emotional and psychological impacts on teen mental health and on their ability to relate to others as adults, the discussions regarding sex ed needs to shift as well.  The increased focus on abstinence was a result of these increased risks.  I know that we have individual lessons on STDs, HIV and abstinence, but there should be a consistent theme emphasized and interwoven through every lesson, to include the lesson on contraception.  This lesson more than any other seems to be trapped in the 1970’s in the way that it does not include the current level of threat and the current understanding of the limited ability that contraception has to mitigate risk.  Since this particular lesson is also at the heart of the sex ed controversy, it is also the one that is most likely to cause the concern that the lesson is presenting a message that contradicts the abstinence message.  Consequently it is the lesson that needs to emphasize the abstinence message and the risks associated with teenage sexual activity more than any other lesson.  I appreciate Ann Monday’s decision to add an abstinence pamphlet to the lesson to attempt to do just that.

This is a very emotional issue.  In emotional issues we often fail to see the common ground.  I am firmly convinced that no one on this board wants children to participate in sexual activity.  Everyone here wants children to remain abstinent and wants children to make healthy life style choices.  No one wants a child to contract a sexually transmitted disease.  Believing that information is empowering, everyone believes that it is important that children have sufficient accurate information that will enable them to make intelligent life style choices.  I believe that it was the common ground that led the staff to make the modifications to the original proposal after the community pointed out some of it concerns.   I appreciate the efforts of Ann Monday and the staff in making those modifications.  But how does the  modified material stack up to those common ideals? 

There are three primary sections of the birth control pamphlet, the morning-after pill, the questions for students to ask themselves and the informational matrix sections.  And the lesson objective is:

The student will identify the advantages and disadvantages of the major types of contraceptives and discuss different moral and /or religious viewpoints concerning their use.

The “Concepts” are:

·        Identify major types of contraceptives and dispel any misconceptions about contraception.

·        Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each.

·        Examine various moral and/or religious viewpoints about the use of contraception.

The Birth Control Facts pamphlet is to provide academic support to the objective and the associated concepts.  The matrix in the pamphlet contributes to the lesson in accordance with the objective and concepts by identifying major types of contraception and providing advantages and disadvantages of each.  The “morning-after pill” section and the section now labeled “Some Questions to Ask Yourself” do not support the objective or associated concepts. 

Besides the fact that the morning-after pill is an abortifacient and not a contraceptive, none of the advantages, disadvantages or health risks are listed for the morning-after pill while it has great health risks. 

In England, pharmacists are warned: Users "of combined oral contraceptives ... experience, more often than non-users, venous thromboembolism, arterial thrombosis, including cerebral and myocardial infarction, and subarachnoid hemorrhage. Full recovery from such disorders does not always occur, and it should be realized that in a few cases, they are fatal."

Common side effects are nausea, abdominal pain, fatigue, headache, dizziness, breast tenderness, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, spotting, blood clots and high blood pressure.

"Blood clots that form in the leg can cause blockage of blood flow in the leg veins [and] can travel to the lung, causing serious disability or death"

Its great controversy is due to the fact that it is an abortifacient, yet nowhere on the pamphlet does it state how it works.  Since the morning-after pill is currently not covered in the contraceptive lesson unless a student brings it up, this is resulting in a significant change in what is presented to students and will result in a significant change to the course material in order to accommodate this change.  If not added to the course material, it puts girls at risk of unknowingly acting contrary to their beliefs.  This level of change was not recognized during the 15 minute review by the FLECAC and is a subject that they should discuss and provide their recommendation to the Board.

Nowhere in the objective or concepts is there any mention of an intent to have the children select a contraceptive method for their preferred use.  The “Some Questions to Ask yourself” section personalizes the issue of contraceptives and guides the children through a selection process.  This provides a message contradictory to the abstinence message.  It is a logical conclusion on the part of the students that if they are being directed to select a birth control method, than they are expected to use it.  They would only be expected to use it if they are expected to be sexually active.  This crosses the line between informing them about contraception and encouraging their use.  This is the line that causes many people to be concerned about sex ed.  Why approach this line when it does not support the objectives of the lesson and there are obviously many parents that take issue with this section.  Nothing is lost in not adding this to the lesson.

While still important, these are somewhat peripheral issues, because the true intent of the pamphlet is to provide the information in the informational matrix.  A common ground is the desire to provide accurate and complete information.  The information that has been left out of this pamphlet is critical.

The pamphlet is just sloppy in the information that it provides regarding health concerns.  It has comments like “few serious problems for most woman.”  The intent should be to inform students what those serious problems are and perhaps the frequency with which they occur.  This sounds more like an ad that is minimizing a negative factor than an informational pamphlet.

It fails to state that Depo-Provera has been shown to increase the risk to STDs by three times due to the thinning of the uterine wall.

But the greatest failure is the depiction of the effectiveness of condoms.  Which puts us back at the root of the sex ed controversy again.  The effectiveness against pregnancy is stated

“If you are very careful each time – 98%.

If you are not very careful each time – 85%."

The source document actual states the 98% is with perfect use and teens tend to be so imperfect that their effectiveness is actually around 80%.  There is huge difference between one pregnancy in 49 times and one in 5. 

Additionally, this is where the 1970’s paradigm of being overly focused on pregnancy minimizes the STD risks.  The Pamphlet states:

“Latex condoms help protect you from HIV and other STD.”

What does that mean?  How much help?  Well the reality is that with many of the STD’s today, the answer is not very much.  In fact with the fastest spreading STD’s it practically does not help at all.  The CDC has stated that a condom provides roughly 50% protection from Chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes, and no protection from HPV and syphilis.  The protection from HIV is only 83-85% still leaving about a 1 in 6 chance of contracting the disease that leads to AIDS.  Ironically these facts can be found in the teacher’s only fact sheet in the STD portion of the 10^th grade curriculum, but they are not found in the contraception lesson or anywhere on this pamphlet. 

How bad is the risk?  Current estimates by the CDC state 20 million people in this country (15%) have HPV and 5.5 million are being infected every year.  Various studies have shown that 17 to 84% of sexually active woman have HPV and estimate that greater that 30% of sexually active woman under the age of 25 have HPV.  To make these numbers a little more personal, if you have 2 daughters under 25 that are sexually active outside of marriage, then there is a better than a 60% chance one of them has HPV and if you have 3 sexually active daughters, there is practically a 100% chance one has HPV.  A 99% correlation between HPV and cervical cancer has been established.  Roughly 14% of those with HPV end up with a cervical abnormality that can lead to cervical cancer. Around 12000 woman develop cervical cancer every year and roughly 4100 die from it (more that die from AIDS).  This is why we are way past talking about just how to prevent pregnancy.  This is why the information provided to the children on this topic can no longer be vague, inconsistent or incomplete.

In light of this risk, these pamphlets do not even include the risk of STD’s in the “weak points” of condoms.  This is not the level of quality that the parents of Fairfax County have come to expect.  It is not good enough to say, well this is the best that we could find.  Lives are on the line here.  And the pamphlet does not even address the mental and emotional impacts of sexually activity prior to marriage where it has been estimated that there is a 3 to 5 times higher suicide rate for young girls that are sexually active.

I know that many, especially in the staff, have not appreciated my tenacity on this issue.  But you see this is personal.  It is personal to the parents, to the students and to me.

My father and my church taught me that sex was something very special and that it was reserved for marriage.  Unfortunately like many young people trying to justify my desires, I went for the anything but intercourse concept of abstinence, just like the definition of abstinence in the other pamphlet by this same company.  That anything but concept resulted in my giving my virginity away in a BOQ room somewhere to a woman that I have not seen in almost 2 decades instead of giving it to the woman that I see almost every night.  A few years ago I attended an abstinence conference. There was a young man that told of how wonderful it was to be able to turn to his new bride and tell her that he had saved himself for her.  And a prior Miss America told of how special it was to be able to turn to her husband on their wedding night and tell him that she had saved herself for him.  It crushed my heart, because I could not turn to my bride and tell her that.  I realized that instead of purity, I had brought into our marriage all of the baggage of each on my relationships.  It is hard enough for two imperfect people to learn to live together without having to overcome that kind of baggage.  I realized that I had weakened the bond that sex is supposed to provide in my marriage relationship and that no matter how good my relationship is with my wife, that it will never be as good as it could have been.  And I will never regain those early years of marriage that could have been so much better.  I realized that I had also contributed to the weakening of that bond in the marriages of the woman with whom I had had relationships.  To the best of my knowledge none of my relationships resulted in a pregnancy and I did not contract any diseases.  (But at the time of my marriage I did not know that – love always protects, … I had was supposed to provide protection for my bride and I could have brought a disease that could harm or even kill her).  So the safe-sex component provided absolutely no protection from the negative ramifications of premarital sex that have permanently impacted my life. 

There are five major risk areas associated with teen sex – pregnancy, STD’s, HIV, psychological and emotional risks.  Contraceptives do a pretty good job with pregnancy, a marginal job with HIV, little to no protection from STD’s, and absolutely everyone that partakes receives some negative impact to their mental and emotional health.  No exceptions.  The birth control pamphlet doesn’t even address those risks or weak points. 

You see I thought that I was supposed to be abstinent until marriage, but I was supposed to be abstinent for marriage.  That is the abstinence message that we need to be giving the children of Fairfax County.  And we need to be weaving it throughout the entire FLE curriculum.  As a culture we are doing a lousy job of teaching children delayed gratification.  As a culture we are doing a lousy job of protecting children from the sexuality predators that are lurking in the music, the video games, the movies, the music videos, the TV shows, the teen magazines and even in the books.  It is everywhere.  It is used to sell sodas, cars and even frozen foods.  Parents are left practically alone to defend their children from this onslaught of sexuality. The schools should be an ally and support to the parents.  We cannot do that with a mixed, vague, contradictory and half-hearted message such as the one presented in the Abstinence 101 pamphlet.  I do not believe that a company that defined abstinence as anything but intercourse understands abstinence and we need to look at a different source.  We need to have a strong, encouraging, and consistent message that is woven through every lesson that provides an accurate depiction of the risks and the benefits.  These pamphlets are not adequate.  The lives of the children of Fairfax County are too important to fall back on the “this is the best we could find excuse.”  I ask you to support my amendment to pull these two pamphlets and have the FLECAC bring us a recommendation next fall.