Jeff Rakover interviews Jessica Arons

TRANSCRIPT

State Progress
Jeff Rakover interviews Jessica Arons
March 19, 2007

Jessica Arons is the Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress.

JR: I’m here with Jessica Arons, who’s the director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress. Thank for being here with us. I’m going to ask you some questions about comprehensive sex education. Now, I know this is a very controversial issue given the values issues it brings into play and some of the politics, but another issue is that the public seems to support comprehensive sex education over abstinence-only. And I was wondering, how would you explain the current prominence of federal funding for abstinence-only versus comprehensive sex ed?

JA: Well, yeah, let me start with how you characterized it as controversial. It’s controversial to the extent that the right wing, I think, has been able to make it an issue of public debate, but, as you said, there’s widespread support among adults and teenagers for comprehensive sex education over abstinence-only-until-marriage education. The polling numbers are extremely high—something like 80 to 90 percent of people support comprehensive sex ed.

In answer to your second question, about how it could be that our policy is so out of sync with public opinion—unfortunately, sometimes that happens. The majority of Americans oppose escalation of troops in Iraq, and yet the administration has gone ahead with that anyway. Elections matter, as George Bush was fond of saying at one point, and for better or worse, the people who are in control often get to dictate the policy. We’ve just come out of several years of conservative control of Congress and they wanted abstinence-only programs, so that’s what they’ve funded. And this is despite the fact that Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) has made some investigations into the abstinence-only programs and found that [they are] not a good use of our dollars in terms of [their] effectiveness.

JR: In light of that, it does seem like there is an opportunity at the state level to advance more progressive policies around sex education. What do you think are some of the most powerful arguments that state leaders who support comprehensive sex education could make that would speak to their constituents’ concerns?

JA: Well, before I get to that, let me back up. I think, with the new Congress—it’s a more sympathetic Congress—there’s also an opportunity for greater progress on the federal level as well. One of the bills under consideration right now is the REAL Act [Responsible Education About Life], and that would designate money for comprehensive sexuality education. So, first of all, I think that there is a good opportunity at the federal level.

But, the states have definitely had the opportunity to pave the way in the last few years when the federal government was going in the wrong direction. So, a handful of states have rejected the federal abstinence-only money and used their own state money, as you know, to fund comprehensive sexuality education.

In terms of state legislators talking to their constituencies about this issue, I think where people get a little squeamish is, they don’t want the schools being substitutes for parents. People have a lot of ideas about parental authority and what they should be teaching their own children. People don’t want the schools teaching their children morality. But they do want the schools to teach their children basic facts about biology.

So, I think people are very comfortable with the idea that the schools are teaching biological facts and things about sexuality and adolescence and growing up and everything that happens during puberty and things about healthy relationships and how to make responsible decisions. But they want to know that their values aren’t somehow being undermined when their kids are at school and their children will go to them for guidance and advice. I think that’s to be encouraged, and I think that’s completely in line with what comprehensive sexuality education seeks to accomplish.

I think that if politicians talk in those terms, people will feel very comfortable about the programs that those politicians are suggesting.

JR: Now, just to backtrack a little bit, when we talk about abstinence-only education, do we mean that when states are receiving federal dollars for abstinence-only education they cannot talk about condom use and contraception in general, or is it that the focus is really on abstinence?

JA: Abstinence-only programs that receive funding from the federal government have to conform to an eight-point definition of abstinence-only education. It’s a fairly restrictive idea of what abstinence means. At the very least, these are programs that really only do talk about abstinence as the only acceptable sexual conduct for [unmarried] people. So abstinence-only programs only talk about contraception in the context of their failure rates. And oftentimes the failure rates are overblown or distorted. Really, when they talk about contraception, the intention is to dissuade people from using contraception and with the idea that they won’t need it because they shouldn’t be having sex in the first place.

I just want to emphasize also, as you probably know, that comprehensive sex education doesn’t just talk about contraception, it does talk about abstinence. It just talks about abstinence in addition to other things that people can use to be safe and healthy in relationships. Comprehensive sex ed—the reason it’s comprehensive is because it includes abstinence and other alternatives for protecting oneself.

JR:  You had mentioned the work being done in California and a couple of other states around comprehensive sex education. What are some of the resources, whether financial or political, that these states have drawn upon in their efforts to move their sex education programs toward a comprehensive approach?

JA: Many states that have accepted the federal money have also used their own money. They’ve used the federal money for abstinence-only programming and then they’ve used their own money to supplement it to have comprehensive sex ed as well. So even when they’ve taken the federal money, that doesn’t mean that they’ve given up on comprehensive sex ed completely. For the states that have rejected federal money, it means they’re not doing any abstinence-only programming, as far as I’m aware.

Sometimes what states have done is they’ve used the federal money to have abstinence-only programming for younger students. And then they’ve used their own state money to do comprehensive sex ed for older students. [At] a young enough age, abstinence-only education probably isn’t harmful or inappropriate because you may not be at a point yet where you’re talking about contraception to students—so long as it’s a program that, again, doesn’t give out distorted or incorrect medical facts and doesn’t reinforce stereotypes. But the idea that you’re telling junior high students only about abstinence, I think, is probably appropriate and not really problematic.

JR: You’ve given us some really great information today. I was wondering whether you might have any additional points you’d like to highlight around this issue, around the debate between abstinence-only versus comprehensive sex education.

JA: I think that this is a topic that politicians and elected officials should not be afraid of. I think it’s very important to emphasize that we want our students to have accurate information. This is health education. We want them to learn how to become healthy, mature adults. And adolescence is a time of transition. It’s not like someone goes from being 11 to 19 overnight. It’s a period where youths are learning how to become adults and how to make mature, healthy, responsible decisions. And I think there absolutely is a role for our schools in providing some of that guidance and some of the information so that people can make responsible, healthy decisions for themselves as they get older.

I also think that you should continue to encourage better communication among families. Even if teens are embarrassed, they definitely do look to their parents as authority figures. But oftentimes parents have trouble discussing these issues with their kids. And so I think that there also could be more programs and support that help parents and kids communicate better. I don’t think that that is something that should be entirely done at the school. But I do think that we are abdicating our responsibility to our youth if we don’t provide them with basic education about their own sexuality and development.

JR: Thank you so much, Jessica.

JA: You’re welcome.