Conservatively Speaking

How will school districts respond to new sex ed law?

Posted by Mary Lazich on Feb. 9, 2010 | 1 comment

Legislation

Wisconsin Governor Doyle is expected to sign a bill that will dramatically change the way sex education is taught in our public schools. I called the legislation “dangerous.” 

Physicians for Life, quoting data from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), reports condoms do not prevent most STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), and that there are 15 million new STD cases in the U.S. every year.

It also reports, “An estimated 20 million Americans are currently infected with genital HPV, making it the most common STD. HPV is the cause of nearly all cervical cancer and has also been linked to prostate, anal and oral cancer. While not everyone infected with HPV will develop cancer, every year 15,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed and 5,000 U.S. women die from the disease. Hundreds of thousands of other women will be diagnosed and treated for pre-cancerous conditions which some researchers estimate are about four times more common than invasive cervical cancer.”

The above data is from July 2001. However, given that cases and rates of STDs have risen statewide ever since, the STD crisis has only gotten worse. That is why legislation about be signed into law in Wisconsin is, to say the least, extremely risky.

The Capital Times reports there could be ramifications with school districts refusing to accept the new guidelines. The newspaper reports:

“Opponents of a controversial sex ed bill passed by Wisconsin legislators warn that if Gov. Jim Doyle signs the bill into law as he has promised, some local school districts will stage a revolt against the measure by ignoring it or dropping their human growth and development curriculum entirely.

‘Did the state in its zeal to impose its own way even think about the consequences? Because a lot of districts are just going to just walk,’ predicts Matt Sande, director of legislation at Pro-Life Wisconsin.”

Read the entire article here.