It’s been a few weeks since Alabama signed a ban on all abortions. In the mixture of ‘godly’ individuals preaching on Facebook about how an abortion is murder of a human life I couldn’t help but wonder if these people know how their genitals work.
We use our downstairs so often it’s terrifying how many men and women don’t know what is going on down there. I am not writing to teach you how your body works but I am writing to advocate that we teach our children how they work, comprehensively.
I’m sure some of my family are already gasping, ‘how could such a good boy turn to discussing such disgusting ungodly topics?’ Let me explain: Arkansas is one of those fabulous, wonderful states that requires schools to stress abstinence. This also means that the state policy is to discourage any sexual activity by students. In my experience, this is at the expense of learning or discussing healthy sexual expectations, how children are made (spoiler: not a stork), contraception for both men and women, and what will actually happen. Children grow up and have sex!
It’s a shocker, I know. I am personally a proud sinner for having sex before marriage much to the chagrin of my grandmother. Back to the topic at hand. My own personal experience in high school of “sex education” was a video. Our principal at the time (whose name we shall call Mrs. Purple to protect her identity) rolled in an old VCR/DVD player and an old box television. All the boys were packed into the band room at the old high school to watch this educational film that had a woman talking about how a woman who has sex before marriage is sullied and dirtied and that should we be sexually active we are nothing more than criminals.
Nothing on how having sex works. Nothing on how sex should be approached in a relationship. Just a hard stop sign and the degradation of women. This would not have been as bad since all of us boys were looking at each other awkwardly throughout the video. We knew the drivel being sniveled from this video was wrong. It didn’t feel right. But then that same principal stood in front of us at the end of the film and began spouting the same nonsense we had just been presented. Thank the Lord that some of our teachers talked about it afterward, agreeing with the students. It was a load of something that comes out of a bull.
So I left high school with a Google-searches worth of knowledge of sex. I thank the Lord once more for my wonderful girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, for giving me the education I actually needed.
A more complete sex education in our schools would help deal with teenage pregnancy as students will better know their options when it comes to contraception. Helping students have healthy sexual expectations will allow them to have healthier relationships.
So next time you hear someone spouting how abortion is evil, just ask them. Do you know how your genitals work? Ten bucks says they don’t.
Jeremiah Alvarado