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Sex Ed Is Key to Reducing Teen Pregnancy, Advocates Say

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States requiring schools to teach sex education have lower teen pregnancy rates; some say high teen pregnancy rates in some Virginia localities are a direct result of the lack of a sex ed requirement in the Commonwealth’s schools.

In the early 2000s, Martinsville, a city of about 13,000 near the North Carolina line, had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Virginia. In a typical year, nearly 75 of every 1,000 teenage girls got pregnant.

More than a decade ago, the school opened a teen health clinic, which provides birth control and treats sexually transmitted infections. Since then, the city’s teen pregnancy rate has plummeted.

“It’s just been amazing because I’ve seen success,” said Beth Holyfield, the clinic’s health coordinator. “I think everybody was a little nervous about it because it was Bible Belt area, you know, offering birth control for children.”

Under the federal Title IX program, the Martinsville High School Teen Health Clinic can treat STIs and provide birth control without notifying the student’s parents. Holyfield and two nurse practitioners don’t discuss abortion, but they do routine checks on student weight and blood pressure and administer prescriptions.

According to new data from the Virginia Department of Health, among the state’s 133 localities, Martinsville ranked 16th in teen pregnancy rates in 2018. For every 1,000 teen girls, there were about 21 pregnancies.

Martinsville’s increased access to sex education and contraception coincided with the drop in the city’s teen pregnancy rate. Experts say preaching abstinence over other methods — Virginia’s official policy — has been ineffective. States with more schools teaching contraceptive methods tend to have lower teen pregnancy rates.

Localities vary widely in teen pregnancy rates

Virginia’s teen pregnancy rate in 2017 was 15 pregnancies for every 1,000 teenage girls, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirteen states had a lower teen pregnancy rate than Virginia’s. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut all had fewer than nine pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls.

Within Virginia, the rates vary widely, according to data obtained by Capital News Service from the Virginia Department of Health through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The data showed the number of pregnancies for every 1,000 adolescent girls in each city and county of Virginia. That way, it’s possible to compare localities regardless of population.

Petersburg, 30 miles south of Richmond, had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the state in 2018: about 44 pregnancies for every 1,000 teenage girls.

Norton, a city at the southwest tip of Virginia, was second with 35 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls. Lancaster County, along the Chesapeake Bay, followed at about 30 pregnancies per 1,000 adolescent girls.

The cities of Roanoke, Richmond, and Hopewell all had rates around 25 pregnancies for every 1,000 teen girls.

Sex education is optional in Virginia

Under the Virginia Standards of Learning, the state’s public school curriculum, schools in the commonwealth may teach sex education but are not required to do so. State law requires an emphasis on abstinence, but the SOL curriculum also includes recommendations for teaching about contraception and condom usage.

More than 90 percent of Virginia schools teach abstinence. Fewer than 40 percent of the state’s high schools teach contraceptive methods recommended by the CDC, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS.

Virginia Department of Education spokesperson Charles Pyle says the curriculum is designed to promote parental involvement and help students cope with peer pressure during developing stages.

Pyle said classes “include age-appropriate instruction in family living and community relationships, abstinence education, the value of postponing sexual activity, the benefits of adoption as a positive choice in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, human sexuality, and human reproduction.”

Dr. Samuel Campbell, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Virginia Physicians for Women health-care service, says pregnant teens need more than that.

Pregnant teenagers encounter a specific set of problems because of limited resources and support, Campbell said.

“They have difficulty with transportation. They frequently will seek care later because they are afraid to tell their parents (or) family. They have to continue with their schooling,” Campbell said. “And they have to deal with the social stigma of being a teen mom.”

Most states require sex ed

Thirty-two states require schools to teach sex education, according to the most recent statistics from SIECUS. Eighteen states — including Virginia — do not.

There are seven types of recommended contraception: the birth control pill, patch, ring and shot; implants; intrauterine devices; and emergency contraception. In 2017, no states reported that all of their schools were teaching about all seven methods as well as how to properly use a condom.

According to SIECUS, 19 states reported more than half of school districts teaching students about a variety of contraceptive methods. Fifteen of those states had teen pregnancy rates below the national average of 18 pregnancies per every 1,000 adolescent girls.

Of the 10 states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates, eight required sex ed in all school districts. They include New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, which had pregnancy rates under 15 per 1,000 teenage girls.

The six states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — reported that three quarters of their schools taught students how to use a condom.

On the other hand, of the 10 states with the highest teen pregnancy rate, seven do not require sex ed in schools. Those states include Arkansas, Texas, and Alabama.

Nationwide, 89 percent of school districts teach abstinence, which recommends that teens put off having sex until marriage. Many schools teach both abstinence and contraceptive methods. That is the case in New Jersey and New Hampshire, where teen pregnancy is below the national average.

Dr. Elizabeth Broderick, a pediatrician in Newport News, calls abstinence education “insufficient information.”

“Abstinence is an excellent way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections,” Broderick said. “But eventually, many people choose to become sexually active, and they should have accurate and complete information so they can make the best decision that fits their beliefs and values.”

Broderick says long-acting and reversible contraceptives are generally best for adolescents, but they can be hard to get.

“Access to contraception is difficult for most teenagers,” Broderick said. “Education about anatomy, physiology, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, and consent is appropriate at school and at home.”

‘Educate them on the facts’ to make good decisions

The CDC’s teen pregnancy prevention guidelines say implants and intrauterine devices, or IUDs, are the most effective and reversible birth control methods. Broderick says these are more difficult to obtain than condoms or spermicide because they require a trip to the doctor and a prescription.

Dr. Natalie Dogal, an OB-GYN with Virginia Physicians for Women, said talking about contraception is important for preventing teen pregnancy. She said she discusses contraceptive options with all her teen patients.

“They tend to have heard good or bad stories from friends, parents, or from reading online, and I like to educate them on the facts to help them make good contraceptive decisions,” Dogal said.

According to SIECUS, about 40 percent of male and female high school students nationwide report having had sexual intercourse.

Nationally, the teen pregnancy rate has decreased in recent decades. According to data from the CDC, the rates dropped by 50 percent from 2005 to 2017.

Nearly a third of teen moms reported not using contraceptives because they didn’t think they could get pregnant. Another quarter of teen moms reported that their partners did not want to use contraception.

“Many teenagers think they are invincible,” Dogal said. “That includes thinking they will never be the one who gets pregnant or gets an STI.”

Resources for Teen Mothers in Virginia

The Virginia Department of Health has resources for first-time teen mothers. In the “Resource Mothers” program, a community health worker develops a supportive mentoring relationship with the teen and her family. The free resources include information about prenatal care and health care, assistance finishing school, and tools to avoid drugs and alcohol. Mothers can also sign up for free text messages on prenatal and infant care.

The Healthy Teen Network has a variety of resources for teen parents across the country, including #NoTeenShame, “Mom, Dad — I’m Pregnant,” and Healthy Families America.

To find a health assistance program near you, call 1-800-311-BABY. This will connect you to the nearest health department. For information in Spanish, call 1-800-504-7081.

The U.S. Bureau of Maternal and Child Health has resources for women nationwide. The programs and initiatives include home visiting, which provides at-risk pregnant women tools for mother and child health, raising children, and preventing neglect. The bureau seeks to promote child development and encourage positive parenting.

Planned Parenthood has a webpage for teens to get information about sex, puberty, pregnancy, and birth control, as well as a private chat function for additional questions.

Planned Parenthood has health centers in Charlottesville, Richmond, Hampton, and Virginia Beach. There are also two health centers in the Washington, D.C., area.

How We Got and Crunched the Data

For this report, we downloaded teen pregnancy rates for each state from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition, we needed the teen pregnancy rates for each city and county in Virginia. The Virginia Department of Health posts such data on its website; however, at the time, the most recent statistics available were for 2017.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the VDH, asking for the 2018 data. The department emailed us the file we requested and then posted it online.

The VDH provided the data as PDFs. We exported the data as an Excel file and cleaned up column headings and other formatting. We have posted all of the data we obtained from the VDH and CDC.

One question we wanted to explore was whether there was a relationship between teen pregnancy rates and the sexual education curriculum taught in schools. To examine this on the national level, we used 2017 data from the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

We compared the council’s data, which explains how comprehensive sex ed is in each state, with the pregnancy rates from the CDC.

Written by Hannah Eason and Emma North, Capital News Service. Top Photo by kyo azuma on Unsplash.

Transgender Teen Student Who Sued School Board Gets Major Federal Court Win – Years After He Graduated

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Gavin Grimm has won another important victory in his fight against the Gloucester County school system that kept him from using the correct bathroom during his high school years.

Gavin Grimm became a household name overnight, it seemed. The transgender teenage high school boy – now 20 years old – sued the Gloucester County, Virginia School Board in 2015, when he was a junior. One of his first wins came the following year, and another after he had already graduated, although he later had a setback at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Friday afternoon, Grimm won another major victory. A federal court ruled the Gloucester County School Board acted in a discriminatory manner and was wrong to ban him from using the boys’ restrooms in his high school, and was wrong to not have changed his school records to indicate he is a boy, and will have to pay his attorneys’ fees.

“The court ruled the board’s policies violated Grimm’s rights under both the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,” WAVY reports.

Perhaps it was his comment to the press that he just wanted to be able to use the restroom like any other student, that struck a chord with many people across the country – just not with the Gloucester County School Board, who forced him to use a specially-devised “boys room” that had been converted from a janitor’s closet.

“The issue remains far from settled. A patchwork of differing policies governs the nation’s schools,” the AP reports Friday. And today’s “ruling will likely strengthen similar claims made by students in eastern Virginia. It could have a greater impact if the case goes to an appeals court that oversees Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas.”

In 2017 Grimm became the youngest person to make TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Photo via NCRM

OPINION: Does Betsy DeVos Have a Point About Campus Sexual Assault Guidelines?

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced that the Department of Education would be reviewing campus sexual assault guidelines passed by the during the Obama Presidency. She stated, among other things, that “through intimidation and coercion, the failed system has clearly pushed schools to overreach…the sad reality is that Lady Justice is not blind on campuses today.”

There was, of course, an immediate and expected uproar from the left.

In fact, my initial instinct was also to be angry — just because it was Betsy DeVos. My general loathing of her charter school policy and support of President Trump, who is shaping up to be the main antagonist of my 20s, makes me want to disagree with just about everything she says.

So why do I find myself saying, weirdly, that I agree with DeVos on this issue?

While I consider myself far, far, to the left, it is also important to be able to see both sides of a story — especially in politics, and especially when lives are hanging in the balance.  

Photo by @CUDJOE70 / Twitter

It’s true that the Obama-era guidelines encouraged universities and colleges to take sexual violence seriously, when in truth, most were not. As a woman, I have experienced in my lifetime the negative stigma surrounding sexual assault, and the gradual shift in attitude to a more accepting society over the last few years.

But at the same time, the rules were ultimately flawed. An easy example of this is the potential loss of federal funding. If schools don’t take sexual assault allegations seriously, they lose it. Pretty simple, and a fitting punishment until you think about its implications on college campuses.

The flaw here is that this Obama-era legislation expects colleges and universities to fully and properly persecute sexual assault cases out of fear — rather than an inherent desire for justice or empathy. I can point to countless examples of systems implemented under terms of fear,  notorious for their extremity and lack of tolerance or mercy. The government’s actions during the aftermath of 9/11, for one, and the subsequent increase in xenophobia and Islamophobia that is still alive today.

American educational institutions replied to these stricter guidelines as those frightened of losing federal funding often do – by overcompensating. A recent article written by Emily Yoffe of The Atlantic highlighted this very issue.

Yoffe wrote that chemical biology student Kadwo Bonsu, a junior at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was the son of Ghanian immigrants and the only black member of his fraternity. He was an avid jazz musician and had plans to pursue his two passions, science and music, upon graduation.

According to the article, Bonsu smoked some weed with a fellow white, female student and they got to talking — then kissing. She made it clear that she didn’t want intercourse, to which Bonsu replied that was fine. Eventually she started performing oral sex, and it was then that she realized how high she was, and that she was uncomfortable with the situation.

“The encounter continued for a few more minutes, during which, she [R.M.] wrote, he cajoled her to stay—’playfully’ grabbing her arm at one point, and drawing her in to kiss—then ended with an exchange of phone numbers. R.M. had not removed any clothing,” wrote Yoffe.

She left, and soon felt, according to her statement, that she had been sexually assaulted — R.M. had felt a completely valid pressure to not leave him hanging, and thus she had stayed. Because she felt expected to, which sucks. And now, she felt violated.

I’m not saying these feelings aren’t valid, because they are. Every woman has a right to say yes or say no without any fear of consequence. Every woman has a right to feel violated, or uncomfortable, and to go as far as she wants to go. All I’m saying is, what happened next reflects the flaws within many university guidelines concerning sexual assault.

Eventually, R.M. pressed charges that didn’t pan out. Nevertheless, the university placed restrictions on Bonsu that eventually led to a campus ban. He was ostracized from his fraternity, from his jazz band, from everything he had loved. He was eventually found not responsible for sexual misconduct, but still the school held up its ban. He tried to apply to other schools but was not accepted.

It’s uncomfortable, because no one wants to side with the perpetrator, but the truth is that the university was acting unfairly because of governmental pressures.

“The interim restrictions, the full-bore investigation and adjudication even though R.M.’s own statement does not describe a sexual assault—were mandated or strongly encouraged by federal rules that govern the handling of sexual assault allegations on campus today,” wrote Yoffe.

This isn’t a singular event. Definitions of sexual assault have become increasingly vague and troubling, under pressure of federal mandates and negative press.

At Brown University, a training video on consent expressed that “consent is knowing my partner wants me as much as I want them.”  This is absurd because of its vagueness in direction, and because it implies that partners should just know when sex with their partner is consensual. Consent is about having an open and honest conversation, not about reading minds.

At the University of Tulsa, and many other schools, guidelines state that students cannot give consent while under the influence, without specifying what amount of alcohol consumption is too much, and where the line must be drawn. If someone consents at one beer versus eight shots, does that count as sexual assault?

As recent as last month, four feminist scholars from Harvard University wrote a letter to the Department of Education addressing this very issue:

“Definitions of sexual wrongdoing on college campuses are now seriously overbroad..they often include sexual conduct that is merely unwelcome, even if it does not create a hostile environment, even if the person accused had no way of knowing it was unwanted, and even if the accuser’s sense that it was unwelcome arose after the encounter.”

With increasingly harried and imprecise methods of defining and addressing sexual assault issues, universities have created an environment of fear and guilt surrounding this issue.

As the authors of the letter wrote, “the definitions often include mere speech about sexual matters…they are so broad as to put students engaged in behavior that is overwhelmingly common in the context of romantic relationships to be accused of sexual misconduct. Overbroad definitions of sexual wrongdoing are unfair to all parties, and squander the legitimacy of the system.”

In fact, populations of men and women defensive of their behaviour, rather than understanding of the seriousness of sexual assault have become increasingly common. They are a product of a hostile environment where students feel that any of their actions could be construed as sexual assault or harassment.

By not properly defining sexual assault, schools have minimized the validity of sexual misconduct as an issue. As a result, schools label everything as sexual assault, and in doing so have mocked the true gravity of being sexually assaulted.

Sexual assault is a somber, unrelenting monster of an issue. In my time as a college-going female, I have seen sexual assault chip away at its victims, leaving fragments of women I once knew to be brighter, happier.

Title IX, in some ways, has created a malicious atmosphere prone to people inclined to blame the victim, and make light of the consequence of sexually assaulting someone.

Image by Know Your IX

However, what stings the most for me is that most administrators are blind to the adverse effect of their policies.

They’re overcompensating to make sure they adhere to government standards of addressing sexual misconduct, and don’t really care about the consequences because they care too much about the funds.

What is apparent in all of this though, is that universities don’t care about me or my level of comfort, or how safe I feel walking alone at night — as long as funding is on the line. So long as this threat exists, schools will first do everything they can to keep their heads above water — even if it means following a ridiculous set of rules.

Then, maybe — maybe — they’ll hear me out.

Ultimately money and fear, the true vices of humanity, tends to trump empathy and proper understanding. And frankly, I don’t know how the government didn’t anticipate that when they passed the guidelines that used money to instill justice.

The power to make rules concerning sexual assault for public institutions comes from Title IX, an outstanding federal law written in 1971.

Title IX was originally used to empower women in the 1970s, and to a certain degree it reignited the women’s rights movement. Title IX originally codified the notion that institutions could not discriminate based on sex and this set of guidelines supports, rightfully so, the idea that students who suffer from sexual assault and harassment are being deprived of equal and free access to an education.

Prior to Title IX, however, women like me were not considered equal to men. Men were given more academic opportunities, like scholarships, while women were considered unequal — only 1 percent of athletic budgets went to female sports played at a college level.  Title IX changed all that. While there are definitely more battles to be won, we’re still slowly moving towards true equality.

Yet, Title IX’s modern interpretation is setting us back. These battles, battles for safe campuses and equality, need to be won with justice and a societal sense of empathy and respect for women. Not with fear of losing federal funding — ultimately, fear will always backfire and lead us to a place from which it is even harder to recover.

There is a counter-argument to all this, I know. That something is better than nothing. But if it’s a flawed something, does that still ring true?

VCU Faced Federal investigation over Title IX violations related to sexual assault and discrimination by faculty

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“When I met with the commonwealth’s attorney after filing the police report, she compared VCU’s response to the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky cover-up,” stated a VCU employee and ’08 alumna who asked to remain anonymous, in an email to an attorney advisor of the Office of Civil Rights(OCR). “That was difficult for me to hear, because I had believed — and want to believe — that VCU has a stronger ethical backbone than that.”

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