Click here to visit the National Reproductive Freedom Project complete with up to the minute headlines, fact sheets, call to action, blogs and resources. Keep on reading for North Carolina specific information, ways to get involved, and links to coalition partner websites.

The ACLU-NC has hired Reina Arai to coordinate the Healthy Youth Project, funded by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation (zsr.org).  The goal of this project is to mobilize volunteers to work strategically towards removing problematic abstinence-only educational programs from public schools in eight North Carolina counties that raise serious civil liberties concerns.

Civil liberties concerns.

Eager to cash in on the billion-dollar (since 1996) business of providing instructional materials branded as “designed to meet the federal guidelines for abstinence-only-until-marriage,” commercial curriculum vendors have filled our classrooms with questionable materials that rely mostly on scaring teens into remaining abstinent.

To conform to program requirements, vital health-care information is censored out of the curricula, thereby leaving teens ill-equipped to make important life decisions responsibly.  Some abstinence-only-until-marriage programs raise additional serious civil liberties concerns:  they create a hostile environment for gay and lesbian teens, reinforce gender stereotypes, and in some instances use taxpayer dollars to promote one religious perspective.

A rigorous, multi-year, scientific evaluation authorized by Congress and released in April 2007 presents clear evidence that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs don't work and the study released in November 2007 confirms those findings. North Carolina cannot afford to look the other way any longer.

• North Carolina has the ninth highest teen pregnancy rate in the U.S.
• Nearly two-thirds of all high school seniors in the U.S. have had sexual intercourse.
• In 2004, 18,165 girls in North Carolina between the ages of 10 and 19 became pregnant, costing taxpayers $312 million. In 2006, the number went up to 19,192 just between the ages of 15 and 19.
• In 2005, 15,956 NC teens between the ages of 13 and 19 were infected with an STD.      

North Carolina received $1,248,963 in federal Title V funding in Fiscal Year 2006. The Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage grant requires states to provide three state-raised dollars or the equivalent in services for every four federal dollars received.

The ACLU supports programs that give teens the information they need to make healthy and responsible decisions about sex.  More than 80 percent of the abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula contain false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.  Ms. Arai is working closely with counties to assist volunteers in changing out problematic curricula, encouraging schools to enforce their own policies of frequent program reviews, and finding volunteers for review panels.

Applause goes to…

New Hanover County completed an 18-month process to review and replace outdated inaccurate abstinence-only curricula. During the Superintendent’s report at the December school board meeting, the abstinence-only teacher who led this process credited a report by the ACLU-NC and NARAL Pro Choice North Carolina for helping to inform this process.

The ACLU-NC Legal Foundation submitted a report that detailed some of the specific problems with the old materials in July of 2006. The ACLU-NC Legal Foundation also worked to recruit volunteers to serve on a curriculum review committee; connected volunteers to national resources and information to assist them in their assessment of various educational materials; and helped organize them to ensure the review process produced a unified curriculum recommendation that we could support.

While the school district did not adopt the committee’s first recommendation for abstinence-only materials, purportedly because the materials were not abstinence-only enough to comply with the restrictive federal guidelines to receive Title V funds, we applaud the school officials, volunteers and community leaders involved for coming together with the mission of replacing materials shown to be inaccurate, outdated, misleading, and fear-based. While no abstinence-only-until-marriage (AUM) program has been shown to decrease teen pregnancy or decrease the number of sexual partners, a couple of abstinence programs have claimed to delay initiation for a year or so.  Ultimately, this benefit is lost when the teen does decide to become sexually active but is not aware of various options to protect himself or herself from unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. 

According to the NC Parent Opinion Survey of Public School Sexuality Education, an October 2003 joint survey between the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Public Instruction, 90.5% of parents of public school children think that sex education should be taught in schools, Accordingly, the majority of New Hanover County parents want their kids to learn complete and accurate sex education.  For the minority of students whose parents opt for them to receive abstinence-only education, we thank the faculty, concerned professionals, and volunteers who played a role in the process to improve health education materials.

Are you a teacher?  A parent?  A student?  A health professional? A member of a faith-based community? Would you be willing to serve on a community panel to review the curricula used in your own school district?  Can you find out what supplemental materials your teens are using in their Healthy Living class to learn sexuality education?

Contact the Reproductive Health Coordinator, Reina Arai, to get involved with this effort.

Coalition partners resources

Email us to request the “Take Issue, Take Charge” web button to place on your website!