Sex Education

For Immediate Release: March 19, 2010

Despite assurances from congressional leadership and other leaders on reproductive health issues on Capitol Hill, the health care reform bill to be voted on Sunday will contain funding for abstinence-only sex education. The provision will force taxpayers to spend $50 million a year for states to spend on programs based, not on medical science, but on religious ideology. The Secular Coalition for America, the national advocacy organization representing secular Americans, expressed its deep disapproval over this reversal.  Read more »

September 22nd- The Secular Coalition for America is actively lobbying in opposition to two amendments proposed to the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform bill which will be voted on this week.  Read more »

Position Paper

Background  Read more »

In May 2009, using federal “abstinence-only-until-marriage” funds, the State of Mississippi held a teen abstinence summit. According to the ACLU:  Read more »

In releasing his 2010 budget outline today, President Obama indicates that his administration will continue funding abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education, an approach that has repeatedly failed to reduce teen pregnancy. It does nothing more than prohibit sexual activity among unmarried young people, as if sexual activity after marriage has a different outcome.

To prevent teen pregnancy, the president’s budget "supports State, community-based, and faith-based efforts to reduce teen pregnancy using evidence-based models. The program will fund models that stress the important of abstinence while providing medically-accurate and age-appropriate information to youth who have already become sexually active."  Read more »