Mandatory sex education at age four?
What if Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston had grown up in England? While the United States endlessly debates the oxymoron-known as abstinence-only sex education, there’s a different approach across the pond.
A recent study found that one in three middle-schools in England has a sexual health clinic that gives condoms, pregnancy tests and sometimes even the morning-after pill to children as young as 11, according to the New York Times. Two British groups are advocating to make sex education for children as young as four compulsory in schools.
That might be going too far for our puritanical tastes, but it’s bracing to learn how out of step the United States is with other Western nations when it comes to sex education and teen pregnancy. A UNICEF report in 2001 found that the United States teenage birthrate was higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including France, Sweden, England, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Turkey, and, yes, the United Kingdom.
Here’s a question that every parent of a teenager deserves an answer to from both Barack Obama and John McCain: As President, what would your reproductive health policy be?
