Last week, for the entire week, I was in Central Jersey at Girls State. The purpose of the program is to allow young women from across New Jersey to form their own state government, by electing city councils, town mayors, county officers, a state party chairwoman, and lastly, a Governor. I mean, the concept of this program is pretty great; I had a great time campaigning and helping my friends campaign for their candidacies. I ran for Governor.
Now, as a candidate for Governor, I wasn’t able to create the party platform. A platform committee had to meet in the wee hours of the morning to form the platform that I would base my campaign on. It surprised me that almost all of these young women wanted abstinence-only education included in the platform.
I spoke out immediately. I was like, uh hello? Shouldn’t you of all people understand the dangers abstinence-only inflicts on youth?
The girls agreed that all seniors in high school should walk around with a fake baby for two weeks. This baby will be electronic; it will cry when it is not “fed”, it will weigh 13 pounds, it will make random noises…etc etc. I raised my hand and told them that this would be a tactic to scare our youth from engaging in sexual activity. I assured them that if they truly wanted to avoid unintended pregnancies, they should teach how to put on a condom and how to make healthy sexual decisions.
But no. Nobody ever listens to me. The girls went on a rant about how if we teach the high school students about contraception, they will think it is encouraging them to engage in sexual activity. Aside from the fact that this is FALSE, it is also a major misconception about comprehensive sex education. Plenty of our policy makers seem to portray sex education as a devilish and counterproductive curriculum. In reality, as we can see in Mississippi, abstinence only education is the reason for high teen pregnancy rates.
It freaked me out how a group of young education high school women were so quick to judge comprehensive sex education and so quick to blindingly support abstinence only education. It just goes to show you that adults aren’t the only people uninformed.
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Did you end up with abstinence-only as part of your platform? How did the other participants react? Was it part of any other would-be governor's platform?