Roundup: Misinformed, Misunderstood and Misled

Roundup: Misinformed, Misunderstood and Misled – Why We Need Sex Education

Jul 20, 2010, 9:16am

A new study in Australia shows women don't understand the morning after pill. But the biggest problem is a lack of understanding in their own reproductive health.

It’s hard to decide how to properly protect yourself against unwanted pregnancies if you don’t have all the facts on both how contraceptives and even your own body works. Australia is learning that via a recent study that shows many women are afraid to use the morning after pill, even though it is widely and readily available in the country.

The Times of India reports:

Women fear using the ‘morning after’ pill, owing to misinformation about how it works and where they can get it, revealed reproductive health experts.

In the first national study of women’s use of emergency contraception since it was made available over the counter, it has been found that majority of women do not know they can buy it without a prescription.

In fact, they also had many inaccurate beliefs.

A third believed it caused an abortion and nearly two-thirds thought it could lead to birth defects if it did not prevent pregnancy.

The study, which was conducted in Australia, concludes that without good information, especially via sex-ed programs, women will not be able to make good decisions for themselves because they are lacking understanding about their reproductive health. Via the Sydney Morning Herald:

Leslie Cannold, a spokeswoman for Reproductive Choice Australia, said many women lacked understanding of how their bodies worked.

“We don’t have any national sexual and reproductive health education program or national standards for sexual and reproductive education,” she said. “Some kids are getting nothing and some are getting pretty questionable information”.

Naomi Knight, the chief executive of Sexual Health and Family Planning, said Australia had one of the highest abortion rates among developed countries and the study highlighted the need for better education.

It sounds so simple — increasing fact based sex education can help people make proper reproductive choices at an appropriate time. Unfortunately, there are some who will go to great lengths to stop sex ed in schools, such as this pushback against adolescent reproductive health curiculum in the Philippines. From GMANews.tv:

The bishops’ lawyer Josephine Imbong leafs through the pages of the sex education modules that the Department of Education (DepEd) proposes to teach in public schools. The 62-year-old mother of eight and self-styled pro-life advocate seems particularly bothered by what she’s reading.

Imbong points to a lesson for fifth-grade students about puberty, which features drawings of the male and female anatomy. Showing these images to children will “remove their sense of modesty,” she argues. “[It suggests that], okay lang naman pala mag-expose ng body. Dati, reproductive system. Ngayon, reproductive rights. Noon, biology lang. Ngayon, may rights-based na. It leads now to a concept of creating in the concept of a young mind of ‘Ah, may right pala ako sa aking katawan.’”

She flips through the teaching manual on mathematics and points to the description of a classroom activity that requires 4th year high school students to analyze statistics about pre-marital sex among Filipino teenagers.

“Imagine, you construct an algebraic equation out of statistics telling you that 30 percent of teens from 16 to 18 have had premarital sex?” she bristles. “I mean, this goes to the subconscious of the child na, ‘Uy, ang dami pala.”

Imbong speaks for the CBCP, the most vocal opponent of sex education in public schools. This school year, 80 elementary schools and 79 high schools around the country will be the first to pilot-test a set of teaching modules that integrate adolescent reproductive health (ARH) into the regular curriculum of 4th grade to 4th year high school students.

The modules integrate topics like personal hygiene and nutrition, reproductive biology, and human rights into regular subjects like English, Filipino, math, science, and social studies. At the end of the school year, teachers from the participating pilot schools will recommend modifications to the modules before deciding whether to implement sex education on a nationwide scale.

But if the CBCP had its way, the program would be scrapped completely.