I Had Abstinence-Only Education

And I wouldn’t recommend it

Photo by Charles 🇵🇭 on Unsplash

My parents are religious, and sent me to schools with a religion-based curriculum. I didn’t have sex ed. I had “abstinence-only” ed.

I was told it was a sin to have sex outside of marriage, and that marriage could only be between a man and a woman. It was also a sin to use condoms or birth control, because the purpose of sex was only to have children.

At a young age, I supported gay marriage. I also couldn’t understand why people couldn’t use condoms or birth control. Pregnancy and having a child are a big deal. What if a woman wanted to have a career?

There is an inherent hypocrisy in this “education.” Growing up, I only knew one couple with 12+ children. Everyone else with only 2 or 3 had to be using some sort of family planning method.

By one measure, 68 percent of Catholic women have used family planning measures, including birth control and sterilization. The implication: a lot of people do it, but no one is allowed to talk about it. Rather than acknowledging that sex is natural and explaining how to do it safely, some schools are leaving teens in the dark.

Abstinence-only education also doesn’t decrease pregnancy rates. That makes sense. If people think birth control and condoms don’t work, they won’t use them…