Safe sex. One of the most basic and important human rights. Unfortunately, across the nation there is a discrepancy in the education of students about safe sex, or sex in general. Until recently the government funded abstinence only sex education courses, with no overall requirements for what was taught. Obama recently passed a bill to stop funding abstinence only sex education, but that doesn't mean the problem is entirely solved. Many schools still teach abstinence only sex education without any across the board regulations. This means that students across the country are receiving different information about sex. Scary, right? Sex education is decided by the states, but even so, the education differs from district to district and even school to school.

Let's take a look at the sex education laws in Virginia. March 1st of this year the Guttmacher Institute came out with a list of all the requirements states have for their sexual education programs. Some disturbing facts came to light about Virginia's mandates on sex ed. For example, sex ed, as well as STI education, is not required to be taught at public schools. When it is, HIV, sexual orientation, healthy life decisions, and parental consent are not required. The information given does not legally need to be medically accurate. In other words, if a school is going to teach sex ed it can teach children essentially whatever it wants. That's a terrifying prospect. Sex can be incredibly risky if students are not even taught information that is accurate. Virginia mandates do have some upsides; they must cover contraceptive use, family communication, and avoiding coercion. These upsides don't mean much when you realize that, even though they talk about contraceptives, they don't have to give medically accurate information on their use or efficacy. One of the girls from my old high school, Kettle Run, told me her opinion of the sexual education we received: "Something that I realized after going through our sex ed program was that I was genuinely scared to come across a situation where sex could be possible. I knew absolutely nothing about it or how my body would react. Everything seems so scary that it really does almost force me to stay abstinent because of the uncertainty. I think high school students need straight up factual answers about sex because so much safety is thrown out the window when we only learn how to not have sex."

A lack of accuracy is all too common in the world of sexual education in public schools. Recently, I asked friends from my old high school to give a word or sentence about their sex education from middle school or high school. The comments I received were full of anger, fear, and indignation. Comments like "insufficient," "awful," "scare tactics," "one-sided," and "if you have sex you will get STDs and you will die". Sounds pretty funny, right? Unfortunately, as Jon Oliver puts it in his video about sex education, "Human sexuality, unlike calculus, is something you actually need to know about for the rest of your life." He has a good point; if any other educational programs had such a high rate of misinformation parents would have a field day. Part of what makes sex ed programs so false are the outside speakers they bring in. Speakers like Pam Stenzel. Pam Stezel has spoken to high schoolers and counseled young women all over the world. She makes a show of using STI scare tactics to teach kids why abstinence is the only option. Her video, called "The Definition of Sex", tells students that condoms do not protect against HPV, which is false. While condoms don't protect 100 percent, they do significantly lessen your risk of contracting the disease. People like Pam are the reason students consider sex ed insufficient.

Another flaw in abstinence only education is that it only deals with heterosexual sex. It does not address the possibility of homosexuality. As one of my friends put it, "I'm a lesbian and I'm still not sure if I can contract an STD." This is a huge problem because everyone deserves to know how they can properly protect themselves. Abstinence only sex ed also portrays women who have had sex as dirty or unappealing to men. Speakers like Shelly Donahue compare girls to a piece of tape, severely lowering female students' self-esteem. Other programs liken sexually active teenage girls to chewed gum, old tennis shoes, and a used toothbrush. All of these comparisons are detrimental to the girls' outlook on themselves and can cause real damage.

Sex is incredibly important, and learning how to do it safely can help lower the national pregnancy and STD rates. Abstinence only sex ed is so harmful to teenagers because it degrades and misinforms them. There are no statistics that say that abstinence only sex ed works. In fact, of the 11 states that don't mandate sexual and HIV education at all, half of them rank in the top 12 states with the highest teen birth rates and four in the top 6. Sex ed is too important to continue the endless cycle of misinformtation and scare tactics that abstinence only education employs.