This is the pro argument for whether students should be taught safe sex in schools. To read the con argument, click here.

Gonorrhea? What’s that?

If you’ve received an abstinence-only sex education, you may know that it’s a sexually transmitted infection (STI), but you wouldn’t know how to protect yourself from it.

There is no evidence that programs that censor information about contraceptives are effective.

A 10 year government evaluation on abstinence-only programs, released in 2007, found that “youth in the program group were no more likely than control group youth to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age.”

This finding also negates the misleading notion that students who don’t receive an abstinence-only sex education are more likely to have sex.

The impact of abstinence-only programs, such as teens not being educated about using contraceptives to prevent STIs, could be deadly. Between the years 2006 to 2008, 46 percent of males and 33 percent of females did not receive formal instruction about contraceptives before they had sex, according to Guttmacher Institute.

In the same year range, about one in four adolescents received abstinence-only sex education without receiving any instruction about birth control, compared to approximately 8 to 9 percent  in 1995.

Even more terrifying is that among teens between 18 and 19 years of age, 41 percent  report that they know little or nothing about condoms, and 75 percent say they know little or nothing about the contraceptive pill.

Unfortunately, funding for abstinence-only programs rapidly increased under the Bush Administration, despite the lack of evidence for their effectiveness.

Yet, America still has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world. Every year, roughly nine million new cases of STIs occur among teens and young adults in the U.S. The rates of teens with chlamydia and gonorrhea are extremely high when compared to teens in Canada or Western Europe.

Advocates of abstinence-only programs emphasize that contraceptives are not 100 percent effective, either. How are students expected to know this vital piece of information if all information about contraceptives is censored?

Abstinence-only programs only work for people who never want to have sex. However, humans are sexual beings. Sex education must adapt to this fact instead of working against it. Teens must be kept informed.

Knowledge will always be the best protection against STDs.

 Scott Novak is an Opinion Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.