A bill prefiled for the Alabama Senate’s 2026 session seeks to expand public sex education’s emphasis on sexual abstinence.
Senate Bill 3, sponsored by state Senator Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville, aims to require all public K-12 sex education initiatives to “exclusively teach sexual risk avoidance.”
The bill defines sexual risk avoidance as a form of curriculum that “seeks to achieve the most favorable health outcomes for all Alabama youth by providing information and skills needed to achieve the benefits of avoiding sexual activity.”
Sex education is also not legally required to be taught in Alabama public schools.
However, under current Alabama law, any sex education program or curriculum in a public K-12 school must emphasize abstinence as “the only effective protection against unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease and infections.”
SB3 would expand the constraints of this requirement by mandating any public sexual education “encourage abstinence from all sexual activity.”
The bill prohibits any sex education or human reproductive curriculum from providing information about how to acquire an abortion, demonstrating contraceptive use or using “sexually explicit” images.
SB3 would also prohibit any local education board from using the services of an individual or organization that doesn’t endorse sexual risk avoidance, as well as organizations that either advocate for or perform abortions.
It also contains provisions requiring a parent or guardian’s consent for a student to take part in sex education.
Under SB3, a student’s parents or guardians would have be notified at least 14 days before a school teaches sexual education curriculum or information regarding the human reproductive system. Parents would also be given the ability to opt their children out of the curriculum.
The bill would authorize the Alabama attorney general to enforce its provisions.
A version of the legislation was introduced by Shelnutt during the 2025 legislative session and failed to progress past its house of origin. Similar legislation was introduced in 2024 by Representative Susan Dubose, R-Hoover.
Shelnutt defended SB277, the 2025 version of the bill on the Senate floor in April, arguing parents should have more control over their children’s sexual education.
“I don’t understand how anybody can have a problem with this. You know the parents get the option to opt out. If they don’t want their kids talking about sexual avoidance, then they can opt out of it,” Shelnutt said.
“I don’t want teachers, left-wing crazy people teaching my kids about stuff that I don’t ever want them hearing about,” he continued. “There is no safe sex before marriage—that’s what we want to teach our kids.”
The bill was criticized by Senator. Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham, and Senator Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, who argued against the efficacy of not teaching students about contraceptive use and attempting to sway them away from all sexual activity before marriage.
“Kids are curious. And let’s face it, if you don’t tell them they’re gonna go out and seek the knowledge on their own from their peers in the classroom,” Coleman-Madison said. “This new term that you’re using of just say no or abstinence, I don’t think is going to work—not with this new age generation that we have.”
“What I’m concerned about are those students in these classes who are members of families whose parents did not get married,” said Figures. “The way this bill is worded, they’re being told that they came here the wrong way, that their parents have committed a sin, and can you imagine what kind of trauma that might put on some children, hearing this lesson being taught?”
An amendment to SB277 was introduced by Coleman-Madison and approved, adding language to require the Alabama Department of Public Health to provide an annual report to leaders in the state Senate and House of Representatives on teenage pregnancies.
“We need statistics to be able to compare to find out if it is working,” Coleman-Madison said of the amendment.
SB3 does not include a provision requiring ADPH to provide data regarding teenage pregnancies to the state legislature.
World Population Review reported that in 2025, Alabama had the fifth-highest teenage pregnancy rate of all U.S. states.
If passed, SB3 will take effect on October 1, 2026.
