Federal Sex Education Cuts and Abstinence-Only Policies Spark Debate Over Teen Health and Fertility

The Trump administration has pulled millions of dollars of funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs nationwide as part of its push for abstinence-only sex ed. Many states, including California, have embraced comprehensive sex ed requiring students to learn about reproduction as well as topics such as consent and contraception. Experts have credited such programs for helping cause the teen pregnancy rate to plummet and say federal policies and loss of funding could prove harmful in the long term and may be part of a larger agenda to encourage childbirth. We’ll talk about the Trump administration’s policies, defunding of programs, and best practices for educating teens about a loaded topic.

Guests:

• Shafia Zaloom, health educator; consultant; author, “Sex, Teens, and Everything in Between” and ” Getting Real About Sex Ed”
• Alice Miranda Ollstein, senior health care reporter, Politico; author, “Side Effects: How Abortion Bans Impact Everyone’s Health”
• Robin Pickering, professor and chair of public health, Gonzaga University; author, “A Modern Approach to the Birds and the Bees”

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Lesley McClurg: Welcome to Forum. I’m Lesley McClurg. I’m in today for Alexis Madrigal.

If you’re a kid and you’re trying to learn about sex, or maybe you’re worried that you are pregnant, you really need an easy system to maybe access free pregnancy tests, get some affordable birth control, maybe a place to get tested for STIs.

For years, federal dollars have helped pay for those kinds of programs that reach young people in places like clinics and schools, community organizations all across the country. But many of those programs are getting slashed. The Trump administration has terminated tens of millions of dollars in grants for teen pregnancy prevention, and it’s redirecting federal policy toward abstinence, marriage, fertility.

So let’s talk about those changes. I am joined by Shafia Zaloom. She’s a health educator and consultant, author of the book Sex, Teens, and Everything in Between and another book, Getting Real About Sex Ed.

Also, Alice Miranda Ollstein. She is senior health care reporter for Politico. She’s the author of a forthcoming book called Side Effects: How Abortion Bans Impact Everyone’s Health.

And Robin Pickering, professor and chair of public health at Gonzaga University. She’s also the author of A Modern Approach to the Birds and the Bees.

Welcome to you all. Alice, I want to start with you. You have described these moves from the Trump administration, these cuts, as chaotic. What exactly has happened, and why are they chaotic?

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Yeah, thanks so much. So these cuts came very abruptly in the middle of the summer. So these were groups all around the country. Some of them were state and local health departments. Some of them were affiliates of Planned Parenthood. Some were faith-based organizations, all kinds of groups.

And they got this five-year grant, and we’re now just partway through that. They had two years left to go before they were supposed to reapply for funding. Instead, their funding got abruptly terminated earlier this summer, and they were told to quickly, very quickly, reapply under these brand-new rules and set of guidelines.

Some scrambled to do that, some were unable to, and some were so opposed to the new guidelines that they said, “No thanks.” And that just puts in jeopardy services that were supposed to start up again in the fall when kids go back to school.

And what I found really interesting and chaotic about this also was that when there’s been other federal grant cancellations recently, they’ve really been targeted at sort of punishing blue states, including California. These are health programs, education programs, climate-related, environmental programs, all kinds of things.

And this example of the teen pregnancy prevention program, you’re not seeing that. You’re seeing these very much across the board. And so I talked to groups in South Carolina, in Texas, in West Virginia, who said, “Hey, we were following the Trump administration’s rules, and a lot of our content was abstinence-only or abstinence-first, and our funding got pulled too, and we don’t understand why.”

Lesley McClurg: Like you said, even faith-based organizations who are really trying to work in these conservative pockets.

So if we just back up just a little, how did the teen pregnancy prevention program work? This was a federal program, and was it considered successful?

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Yes, so this is more than a decade old at this point. It’s gotten bipartisan support from Congress, and it has been considered very successful.

Of course, it’s not the only factor in teen pregnancy going down over the years. Of course, a lot of that experts also attribute to an expansion of access to contraception under the Affordable Care Act, which made it sort of an essential benefit that had to be covered by insurance without out-of-pocket costs. So that was a big factor, too.

But this funding was, yeah, very important, and it funded programs all around the country. Some of those programs were school-based, some of them were after-school or community programs. Some of them were operating out of houses of worship, homeless services for youth, all kinds of different things.

And now the future of the program is, you know, very much up in the air.

Lesley McClurg: And considered successful, correct? I mean, it is a major factor in helping these rates, these teen pregnancy rates, go down.

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Absolutely. So there were experts who were very alarmed at the high rates of teen pregnancy in sort of the early aughts, mid-aughts, and it’s come down a lot since then.

You know, the CDC says about a 68% decline, and like I said, you know, a lot of that is attributed to better access to contraception but also to this education that was going on around the country.

Lesley McClurg: So, Robin, the Trump administration is going back to — we just, you know, at the top of the hour pointed out — an abstinence-only model of sex education. So what is taught if abstinence is the only thing taught? What exactly is in that education?

Robin Pickering: Well, that’s a really great question because it varies considerably.

What the evidence tells us is that a comprehensive plan and a comprehensive approach to tackling sex education, which means that it has to be medically accurate, that it has to talk about both abstinence and effective ways to practice birth control and to prevent sexually transmitted infections.

Comprehensive approaches really have guidelines that talk about, okay, these are the evidence-based things that you need to discuss to prepare young people to be healthy adults.

These abstinence programs, really what it outlines is what you can’t talk about. And part of that is the effective nature of birth control. Part of that is gender and sexual orientation.

And what happens, and what part of the problem with that is that we’re just leaving out a lot of information and leaving out, quite frankly, a lot of kids and things that matter to them.

Lesley McClurg: Do we know then what is actually happening in the classroom? We know what they’re maybe not talking about, but what are they talking about in the classroom?

Robin Pickering: Well, the reason that we moved to a comprehensive approach was because, in part, they were talking about a lot of things that just weren’t medically accurate.

And we also know that it’s ineffective to just talk about abstinence. What they found was when they used that model in education, it not only wasn’t effective at, you know, delaying sexual intercourse, but what happened was when people did eventually engage in sexual intercourse, they were much less likely to use birth control, to use condoms.

They also found that when we leave out, again, discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity, that bullying rates in schools go up.

So part of the problem, too, is the range of ability for people to tackle these topics, and there isn’t really a structured norm in terms of what’s discussed in these abstinence-only models. And there was a lot of just medically inaccurate information that was being promoted.

Lesley McClurg: And how do federal policy objectives actually control what is taught in schools? I mean, the state is in charge of what’s taught in school. So when these federal policy objectives change, can they police what’s happening inside a classroom?

Robin Pickering: Well, a lot of times grants are only available for folks who are supporting particular curriculum. So in this case, as Alice mentioned, the grant funding is pulled for specific types of curricula.

So in a sense, yes, they’re offering federal funds if you do things a particular way.

Lesley McClurg: Shafia, what is in California’s 2016 law that requires comprehensive sex ed? What is happening? What is taught in classrooms here?

Shafia Zaloom: It’s a much more comprehensive approach. And I think that what a lot of people — where misunderstanding takes place — is really understanding what comprehensive sexuality education is and how it benefits young people and communities.

So what’s being taught in classrooms in the state of California, ideally, right? Because there’s what’s required, there’s how it’s interpreted, there’s then presented and taught to kids.

But really, it’s a more holistic approach and it’s a way by which kids — we focus on the relational aspects of sexuality education, which is super important.

Immediately when people hear anything with the word sex in it, they default to thinking of intercourse or intercourse education. And that’s actually a very narrow and limited representation of what CSE actually is.

So CSE talks about consent, it talks about our rights, it talks about healthy communication, it talks about authentic connection. It really promotes in communities and schools, learning communities in particular, kids feeling socially connected.

And that’s really important because we know that when kids feel socially connected, that prevents certain risk behavioral experiences like depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, loneliness.

And when kids feel connected, seen and heard, when they feel like they are supported in going through the natural human developmental process of identity formation and how we sustain connected relationships with other people, they are more readily available and able to learn.

And I think that’s a really important piece, too, that when we feel we are an integral part of and matter in a community, that then we are — our well-being and our relationships are going to keep us learning and learning well and with each other in collaborative and cooperative ways.

And so, you know, contraceptive services in these school clinics and stuff were really just the gateway services to all these other ways by which kids were engaged in positive relationships and acquiring information and counseling and support on how to be socially connected in community, how to feel like they matter, that they’re seen and heard.

And what people forget, because historically we’ve stigmatized sexuality so much in this country, is that this is really about the capacity to love and be loved. And that this is about being in relationship with dignity, empathy, and responsibility and care.

Lesley McClurg: To be crass, much, much more than just the P and the V — like a much broader set of tools that students can use to navigate their budding sexual relationships. Absolutely. Very important.

We’re talking about the Trump administration’s sex ed policies and how defunding is occurring for pregnancy prevention programs.

We’ve been joined, or we are joined, by Shafia Zaloom. She’s a health educator. You just heard from Alice Miranda Ollstein, senior health reporter for Politico, and Robin Pickering, professor and chair of public health at Gonzaga University.

We’d love to hear from you. Are you seeing a change in the attitude toward sex and fertility in young people? What are you hearing from your teens? Where is your teen getting their information about sex ed?

Give us a call now at 866-733-6786, or 866-733-6786.

Stay with us. We’ll be right back after this break.