State Senate Passes Healthy Youth Act
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Lisa Subeck January 28, 2010 608-358-7090 State Senate Passes Healthy Youth Act
NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin Applauds Critical Action to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and STDs Madison, WI – Today, the Wisconsin State Senate voted 18-15 in favor of passing the Healthy Youth Act. The Healthy Youth Act sets guidelines to ensure that all sexuality education programs taught in Wisconsin’s public schools are comprehensive, age appropriate, and medically accurate.
NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin applauds members of the Senate for their support of the Healthy Youth Act.
“Wisconsin faces a serious public health crisis among our youth. Teen pregnancy is on the rise for the first time in 14 years, and we are seeing skyrocketing rates of sexually transmitted disease among teenagers in our state.” says Lisa Subeck, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin. “By passing the Healthy Youth Act, the State Senate has brought us one step closer to ending this crisis.”
In 2008, 45% of Wisconsin high school students self-reported being sexually active. Only 61% of those sexually active students reported using a condom during their last sexual encounter. Responsible sexuality education including information about both abstinence and contraception has been shown to delay sexual activity among teens and reduce the incidences of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection.
Passage of the Healthy Youth Act by the Senate came on the heels of a Guttmacher Institute study released this week showing a rise in teen pregnancy for the first time in more than a decade. This rise came at a time when our national government under the Bush administration dumped $1.5 billion dollars into abstinence-only sexuality education programs.
“This study is one more indication that telling teens not to have sex is not enough, and abstinence-only programs do not work to prevent teen pregnancy,” said Subeck. “The Healthy Youth Act is a common sense measure that recognizes the importance of arming our teens with the comprehensive, unbiased, and medically accurate information they need to make responsible choices. NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin applauds members of the State Senate who voted for this important step toward reducing the rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection among Wisconsin’s teens.”
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