Provide full funding for UK VOX program

UK VOX, Voices for Planned Parenthood, acknowledges that abstinence is the only guaranteed way to prevent pregnancy.

However, as an organization that promotes safe sexual practices, we also acknowledge that many people across time and space have chosen to forgo a 100 percent guarantee for the ability to express their sexuality in a variety of ways. Engaging in sexual activity is something most of us will choose to do at some point in our lives and UK VOX believes we all deserve access to information that will keep us healthy and safe.

Comprehensive sexuality education doesn’t promote sexual activity. In fact, one of the four primary goals of comprehensive sexuality education is to help young people exercise responsibility, abstinence and how to resist pressures to become involved in sexual intercourse prematurely. Unfortunately, under the previous administration, comprehensive sex education was defunded and replaced by abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

Many abstinence-only-until-marriage programs perpetuate prejudices based on gender, sexual orientation, family structure and pregnancy options.  These programs resort to fear tactics in place of factual, comprehensive information about sexual behavior. Instead of instilling in students the confidence to choose how and when to become sexually active, abstinence-only-until-marriage programs rely on shame to further their definition of “normal” sexual activity.

Beyond the problematic moral structure of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, it has proven to be ineffective in reducing rates of teen pregnancy around the U.S. In 2008, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services estimated Kentucky received over $3 million in federal funds for abstinence-only programs. Unfortunately, Kentucky still has the eighth highest rate of teen pregnancy in the U.S. Nationwide, teens that had comprehensive sex education were less likely to become pregnant than teens who had no sex education or who were in abstinence-only programs.

The time has come for a commonsense policy and real funding to address a preventable health care crisis among our nation’s youth. That’s why Planned Parenthood of Kentucky and UK VOX is urging everyone to participate in our Week of Action and to join our call to fully fund sex education.

UK VOX will be tabling Wednesday, Sept. 30 in White Hall  Classroom Building and Thursday, Oct. 1 in the Student Center.

Stephanie Hopkins and Alecia Fields

VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood