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Gov. Pat Quinn (D-Ill.) announced he
would sign into law a Senate-passed bill that would require all Illinois school
districts that offered sex education to include facts on birth control and STDs
in addition to abstinence-only information. Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago)
stated the bill aimed to reduce incidence of STDs and unwanted pregnancies
among young people. State data indicated that 35 percent of all chlamydia cases
and approximately one-third of gonorrhea cases reported in 2011 occurred among
people ages 15–19.
The new law’s potential effect on
actual practice was unclear. Current Illinois law required abstinence-only sex
education and allowed school districts to opt out of teaching sex education;
the new regulation still would allow systems to opt out of teaching sex
education and would allow parents to hold their children out of sex education
classes. The Illinois Board of Education did not track how many of the state’s
860 public school districts taught sex education or monitor the content of
existing curricula. However, a 2008 University of Chicago study indicated that
93 percent of public school districts taught sex education and approximately 65
percent of sex education teachers used a curriculum considered “comprehensive”
by researchers.
Opponents of the new law included
the Chicago-based Abstinence and Marriage Education Partnership, which marketed
abstinence-based curricula to school districts. Executive Director Scott Phelps
stated that the organization’s curricula did teach what contraception was, but
did not explain how to use contraception.
The Cairo public school
superintendent favored the new law and stated that comprehensive sex education
was favorably affecting Alexander County birth rates, which had been the
highest in Illinois, with teen mothers accounting for 21.9 percent of all
births in 2009. Cairo public school students took a sex education class in the
seventh grade and ninth grades.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus.
To learn more about The Friends of
AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
