Florida Rolls Back Comprehensive Sex Ed
Hot off the press — Florida is rolling back s/x education classrooms in support of more abstinence-only programs.
Despite Florida being in the top three states for HIV diagnoses, they are placing more restrictions on school lessons. (KFF, 2024).
The Associated Press states, “Officials from the Florida Department of Education,… have been directing some of the state’s largest school districts to scale back their lesson plans not only on s/xual activity, but on contraceptives, human development, abuse and domestic violence.”
This is a critical misstep and I fear more restrictions and rollbacks like this across the US if DST is elected.
S/x education IS political. I’ve had people come to my platform and try to tell me otherwise, stating they were just here for “information.”
If you have ever sought out information about your body, s/x, or relationships because you had unanswered questions, you were likely missing some of this knowledge from your health class experience.
Many people, myself included, suffered from the misinformation and lack of information covered by standard, abstinence-only health programs.
Abstinence only education program’s DON’T work — we know this. This rollback in Florida is a direct result of political action.
I’d love to see a world in which s/x education is unanimously seen as a basic human right — because it is. But rollbacks like these further emphasize the current political climate, impact and risk to educators, and the attacks on students’ basic rights to information about their bodies.