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A bill that would require Alabama public schools to teach abstinence-based sex education is likely dead for the session after Senate Democrats ran out the clock on Tuesday.
Beginning today, bills originating in the Senate will need a unanimous vote to be sent to the House. That effectively kills Senate Bill 277 by Sen. Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville, to require any sex education programs in public schools to teach “sexual risk avoidance,” a rebrand of abstinence-based sex education.
Long debate over the general fund budget on the Senate floor Tuesday gave Shelnutt’s bill a small window of time for passage. Shelnutt made his displeasure clear on the floor.
“We’ve only got 10 more minutes. Y’all wasted the whole day. So, let’s just waste the last 10 minutes. I know you want to waste the last 10 minutes,” Shelnutt said 10 minutes before the stroke of midnight.
The bill would prevent sex education materials from being “sexually explicit,” would prevent the demonstration of how to properly use a condom, would block information about how to obtain an abortion and would emphasize the risks of contraception.
Shelnutt told his colleagues that he brought the bill because he doesn’t want “teachers, left-wing, crazy people, teaching my kids about stuff that I don’t ever want them to hear about … I don’t want my kids taught that crap. I mean, it’s crap.”
At one point during the floor debate, Shelnutt ignored Sen. Vivian Figures, D-Mobile, as she asked him questions about the bill.
“You’ve read the bill. You know what the bill does. There’s no sense wasting my time answering your questions. Y’all want to stop it, so just you got the mic. Go,” Shelnutt told Figures.
The bill made it three-quarters of the way through the Legislature last year, passing the House under Rep. Susan Dubose, R-Hoover, before stalling in the Senate in the session’s final days.
The bill does not define “sexually explicit,” but specifically prohibits sexually explicit “materials” in addition to images and videos, which could extend to written material.
The bill goes further to prevent local boards of education from using organizations that provide abortions to teach sex education. Planned Parenthood is the preeminent organization that teaches comprehensive sex education while also providing abortions.
