Editor's Note: This post is by Missy Bird, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Action Council. 

For over two years, advocates concerned about the reproductive health care of Utah’s teens have campaigned for a reform to our current sex education curriculum in Utah. Planned Parenthood Action Council (PPAC) ran a statewide campaign, the Prevention Now Campaign, whose staff and volunteers worked tirelessly to gather more than 10,000 petition signatures in support of this change. We held numerous town hall meetings, and garnered the endorsement of many policy makers and elected officials including the Utah State Attorney General.

Support of a change to our current curriculum is so widespread that the American Academy of Pediatrics-Utah Chapter, National Assoc. of Social Workers-Utah Chapter, Utah Nurses Association, Utah Public Health Association, March of Dimes, Association for Utah Community Health, Utah Sexual Violence Council, American Association of University Women-Utah Chapter, Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and the YWCA Salt Lake City all signed on in favor of Senate Bill 54.

Unfortunately, the Utah legislature has not only been unresponsive but impertinent. In fact, at a legislative hearing in October 2009, sexually inappropriate and substantively inaccurate testimony was given at the request of the Senate Chair of the Health and Human Services Interim Committee in a direct attack against Planned Parenthood and sex education.

Despite all these efforts, there was a rallying cry on the part of parents, students, teachers and medical providers and an active groundswell continued into the 2010 legislative session.

When Utah’s legislative session began in January, the sex education bill was introduced by a Republican Senator, Stephen Urquhart (Dist. 29). When the bill came before the Senate Education Committee for review, Senator Urquhart asked the members of the Committee to substitute his bill. This substitute was the draft that everyone on all sides of the issue could live with and it was the result of months and months refinement and conversation.

Senator Urquhart’s request was met with dead silence for over 5 minutes. Not a single member of the seven-member Committee, not even the one Democrat in attendance, would make a motion to hear the Senator’s bill. This stonewall tactic was used even after the Committee Chair asked the packed room full of spectators how many were there to testify regarding the bill, and approximately sixty people raised their hands.

The legislature’s treatment of this issue clearly demonstrates their unwillingness to consider the facts or to hear from their constituents. It also blatantly represents an unwillingness to even have a discussion about a policy that involves thousands of young people and their future health and fertility.

To say we are disappointed is an understatement.

It is the hope of all the groups, advocates, and community members who have bee involved in driving this conversation to the forefront that when the Utah State Legislature has another opportunity to learn about this incredibly important issue that they will be willing to listen and will not impose such a deafening silence on such an important issue.