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Sex Education: The Hidden Agenda
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16836 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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9 / 1989 |
5,554 Words |
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Jacqueline R. Kasun
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The second-grade teacher asks, "if any child wants" to stand before the class and point to and name the parts of his or her own body, including the genital organs. No one volunteers. The teacher calls several by name. They demur. Finally, two agree to perform. This exercise is part of the mandated New York "abuse prevention" program, so named because of parents' objections to second-grade sex education.
Almost three-fourths of American young people of ages sixteen and seventeen have had sex education in school. The proportion was much smaller--between one-third and one-half-- in the early 1980s. The rising trend is the result of giving the instruction to a larger proportion of students, giving it at earlier ages, and giving it in a larger number of class settings. By the time they graduate from high school, probably almost all young people have had sex education.
School-based clinics dispense contraceptives, make abortion referrals, and provide pregnancy "counseling." These activities are now expanding in public schools in the way that sex education did a few years ago. Starting with one clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1973 expanding to a reported 14 in 1985, the numbers proliferated to 138 operating in 1988, with another 65 in the planning stage.
The movement to provide American school children with universal sex education together with free access to contraceptives and abortion first received government support in the 1960s with the Johnson administration's initiation of federal grants for "family planning." As part of the War on Poverty, the Office of Economic Opportunity began in 1965 to award family-planning grants to community action agencies.
The Call For Sex Education
As its contribution to the war effort, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issued in 1966, a call for sex education in the schools, specifying that the instruction should induce young people to perceive their "responsibilities" in the area of birth control.
In 1967, Congress amended the Social Security Act to provide funds for family planning in maternal and child health programs. Also in 1967, Congress amended the Foreign Assistance Act to finance family planning and population programs in countries receiving U.S. foreign aid. And in 1970, Congress amended Title X of the Public Health Services Act to provide yet another, still larger vehicle for continuing federal financing of "family planning."
In addition to the funding, Congress provided muscle and teeth. Under federal law, health maintenance organizations must provide family planning services. Federal law requires that all persons who receive federally funded public assistance, "including minors who can be considered to be sexually active," must be offered family-planning services. Countries that receive U.S. foreign aid must see to it that they "build motivation for smaller families." They must show their "commitment and progress" by their "control of population growth," along with other indicators of worthiness.
Thus Congress created the conditions for massive growth in the sex education and birth control movement. From a crank obsession subsidized by drug companies, it became a
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