When I was in high school, I witnessed my peers suffer from STIs and unwanted teen pregnancies as a result of improper sex education. This may not have occurred if my school had provided a medical-based curriculum that could have educated and empowered my peers on making different choices.
 
One class in high school could help prevent unwanted teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. The United States is the leader of teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections across all the developed nations. Currently, only thirty states and the District of Columbia require public schools to teach sex education. Only 22 states mandate sex education to be medically accurate, meaning the majority of American teenagers are not receiving a factual education to aid them in making smart health decisions. Instead, many teenagers receive no formal sex education, abstinence-only sex education, and sometimes medically inaccurate sex education.
 
According to a report published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, abstinence-based programs were deemed ineffective. They had no impact on changing sexual risk behaviors in teens or reducing teen pregnancy rates and sexually transmitted infections.
 
How can we expect our youth to protect themselves from preventable sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies if we do not give them the tools to do so? It would be as if we were allowing people to drive cars without ever receiving any driver’s education or passing their driver’s license exam.

I propose that the Department of Education allocate funding for medically accurate sex education to be implemented across the country in public high schools.
 
Join me in asking the Secretary of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona, to provide national leadership on this issue so that kids across America have the vital information they need to make life-saving choices.