Thursday, April 23, 2015

Sex Ed In Michigan Might Actually Improve After One Woman Live-Tweeted Her Son's Class

by Tara Culp-Ressler Posted on April 21, 2015 at 10:02 am
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Alice Dreger, a well-known speaker and author who has a background in medical ethics and sex research, sparked a media firestorm last week after she live-tweeted her 14-year-old son's sex ed class. Her outraged tweets about the issues with the abstinence-focused presentation - which encouraged boys to seek out girls who say "no" and warned that condoms are full of holes - got picked up on several national news sites.
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But the story doesn't end there. The questions raised by Dreger's widely-read tweets could lead to some policy changes in her home state of Michigan.
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There's a patchwork of varying sexual health requirements across the country. In Michigan specifically, state law does not currently mandate sexual education in public schools. When sex ed classes are provided, they're required to stress that "abstinence from sex is a responsible and effective method of preventing unplanned or out-of-wedlock pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease and is a positive lifestyle for unmarried young people."
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Even before Dreger's ninth grade son asked her to sit in on his health class, State Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr. (D) was thinking about ways to update those standards. Hertel, who serves on the Senate Health Policy Committee, recently met with a student group at East Lansing High School to discuss the issue.
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And now, according to the Lansing State Journal, Dreger's tweets have given Hertel some new questions to consider. He said he's particularly concerned about the group hired to provide the abstinence presentation that Dreger attended - called Sexually Mature Aware Responsible Teens, or SMART - because it has ties to an anti-abortion group. SMART is connected to the Pregnancy Services of Greater Lansing, a right-wing "crisis pregnancy center" that attempts to dissuade pregnant women from choosing an abortion.
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Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) have a well-documented history of misleading patients about sexual health issues. Employees at CPCs often downplay the effectiveness of birth control, exaggerate the risks of having an abortion, and tell women that they shouldn't be having sex outside of marriage. Nonetheless, it's not uncommon for these groups to receive state funding to teach abstinence-only education programs.
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