A recurring bill to mandate abstinence-only sex education in Alabama schools has cleared its first hurdle of this session, passing out of a Senate committee Thursday.
Senate Bill 209 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.”
The term is effectively a rebranding of abstinence-only sex education. Alabama schools are not currently required by law to provide sex education courses, but any sex ed 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 on current law 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.
Several organizations rallied outside the Statehouse on Tuesday in opposition to the bill.
“SB209 is not about protection, it’s about control and denying young people access to the information they need to make informed decisions about their bodies and their futures,” said Courtney Roark, policy director for URGE Alabama. “A lack of information—or only information that is highly stigmatized—creates so much opportunity for violence to happen to our young people. Comprehensive sex education acts as a crucial counterbalance providing young people with fact-based medically accurate information that empowers them to distinguish truth from fiction.”
Roark emphasized Alabama’s high rate of teen pregnancies and teen STIs as an example of how abstinence-based sex education has failed Alabama youth so far and why comprehensive sex education is necessary.
