Final paper topic

For my final paper I would like to write about assisted suicide and why it should be legal or why it should not be legal or the arguments for and against censorship, focusing on internet censorship, but also including education, and art censorship.

Journal 11

Abstinence education has done more damage than it should have been allowed to and has funded far too long. Teen pregnancy alone accounts for more than $9 million per year in costs to U.S. taxpayers (Hoffman SD. By the Numbers—The Public Costs of Teen Childbearing. Washington, DC: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy; 2006) and billions of dollars have been put into a program that has been proven not to have any great influence on teens sexual behaviors apart from reduced use of contraceptives. Too much effort has been put into teaching nothing, and it’s time we put that effort into teaching something.

Abstinence education is doing more damage than it should have ever been allowed to and American taxpayers have spent far too much money funding it. Teen pregnancy alone accounts for more than $9 million per year in costs to U.S. taxpayers (Hoffman SD. By the Numbers—The Public Costs of Teen Childbearing. Washington, DC: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy; 2006) and billions of dollars have been put into a program that has been proven not to have any great influence on the sexual behaviors of adolescents, apart from a reduced use of contraceptives. Too much effort has been put into an education system that goes out of its way to teach nothing, and it’s time we put that effort into an education system that teaches something.

Journal 10

In the American Progress article, Abstinence-Only Sex Education Programs Fail Teens, Olivia Ferguson argues against Abstinence-Only education in schools, and exposes some of the negative impacts it has had on American teenagers. The best example she gives in this article is the example of an investigation done by Texas Monthly.

This investigation found that Texas has the highest rates for Teenage pregnancies, educators are often not qualified in the way that they have no previous health education, those that did have health degrees also stated that the some of the curricula “did not contain a single fact” and that Texas is receiving $4.5 million every year through the Title V bill (more than any other state in the U.S.).

Ferguson cites many different studies, such as ones from the Centers for Disease Control that found that “although teenagers who take ‘virginity pledges’ may wait longer to initiate sexual activity, they are more likely to enjoy oral and anal sex, and they are just as likely as other students to be infected with sexually transmitted diseases” and “Eighty-eight percent eventually have premarital course”. She also cites a report from the Committee on Government Reform that stated only two out of the thirteen states gave accurate information about sex.

In this second report, Ferguson explains that abstinence-only education classes taught things such as, “Half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus”, “Touching a persons genitals ‘can result in pregnancy’”, “a 43-day-old fetus is a ‘thinking person’”, “HIV can be spread via sweat and tears”, “Women who experience abortions ‘are more prone to suicide,’ and as many as 10 percent become sterile”, and that “condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse” (Ferguson gives the correct percent being less than 3 percent).

Ferguson makes her argument against abstinence-only education very clear and operant that there are personal ideological motivations for abstinence-only education instead of compassionate motivation. In my paper, I would like to look up most of her sources and use more from where she got her info.