Advantage discrimination needs to end

Stop advantage discrimination in our schools. What is advantage discrimination? When administrators and teachers of our youth in schools and in off-site school rooms decide that youth need to have information that may discourage their greatest potential and success, that is advantage discrimination.

Most evident of this type of discrimination is the sexual health education prominent in many of our classrooms - Sexual Risk Reduction.

The myth that nearly every teen will have sex is the reason given for promoting the use of birth control to reduce the risk of becoming pregnant or being infected with a Sexually Transmitted Disease.

These lessons normalize teen sexual activity while teaching how to use birth control methods. There is danger in these instructions of leaving youth vulnerable to the very consequences the lessons are to prevent youth from experiencing.

There is only one proven method of avoiding all consequences of sexual activity: abstinence from all sexual activity.

In medical terms, reducing the risk through explicit education is secondary prevention of the diseases and consequences that may follow teens throughout their lifetimes.

Sexual Risk Reduction education does not give youth the benefit of optimal health by choosing the best for themselves and their future families.

Those who teach protection other than complete avoidance of these consequences through abstinence are guilty of advantage discrimination.

Ruth Anne Eccles

Executive director

Equipping Youth of Sexual Health Education, Inc.

Cedar Rapids