Reality has a liberal bias…

Despite the total lack of insightful political analysis on my blog (sorry), I do, in fact, have opinions on topics that stray beyond what I did last weekend; one of which is health education.

According to a new study from the University of Washington (go Huskies!) “Students who receive comprehensive sex education are half as likely to become teen parents as those who get none or abstinence-only sex education”. Hmmmm….so maybe if we wanted to cut down on unwanted teen pregnancies, we should stop resorting to self-righteous calls for chastity and irrational fear tactics.

A part of becoming an adult is accepting the consequences of your actions. However, one of the responsibilities of our society is to minimize the harm done when immature kids have accidents, are the victims of assault, or simply make bad choices. The whole ‘that’s what you get for being immoral’ thing is callous and short-sighted. We’ve collectively decided to saturate our society in sexual imagery, so how about balancing that out with some realistic health education so our kids can make good choices?

It’s the principle of harm reduction; people will do things that we don’t agree with, but instead of ignoring problems or moralizing, we should roll up our sleeves and look at ways to minimize the behavior or mitigate its impact. Simple things like providing comprehensive health education, improving access to contraceptives, and creating a climate of open dialogue can go a long way towards preventing teenage pregnancy and reducing its lasting social costs (Freakonomics has an interesting slant on this). At the very least, ditch the myopic ‘abstinence only’ mentality and start thinking about Plan B. Even if it means having awkward and frank discussions about the messy realities of life, it’s worth pursuing a more pragmatic and better functioning society.