As part of a sex education grant, the Office of Population Affairs (OPA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced that Planned Parenthood of the Heartland will receive $2,053,383. The endeavor is called “Optimally Changing the Map for Teen Pregnancy through Replication of Programs.” Its aim is to reduce teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) through “saturation of communities with the greatest needs and disparities by using a systems thinking approach to replicate effective programs with fidelity.”
Planned Parenthood has a long history of using sexual education programs to target children. In addition to the graphic material that is typically used, studies have shown that comprehensive sex education and access to birth control do not reduce unintended pregnancy rates. Awarding Planned Parenthood such a large grant for a program that has proven to be ineffective clearly seems like a waste of money.
In fact, this isn’t even the first time Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has received such a sizeable sum of money for sex education. Previously, the organization was given a $965,988 grant to do the same work in counties in Iowa and Nebraska.
In other places where Planned Parenthood has enacted its sex education program, parents and community leaders have rallied together to remove the abortion provider from their schools. While Planned Parenthood markets itself as a provider of women’s healthcare, those services are incredibly limited, and they cannot deny that they commit more abortions annually than any other organization.
The last thing Planned Parenthood should be trusted to instruct children about is unexpected pregnancy and STD prevention strategies. Especially when their curriculum involves teaching children about pornography and BDSM.
This is probably why Planned Parenthood’s track record when it comes to sex education is one of complete failure. Two federal studies on this topic have found lackluster results.
An HHS-funded report, “Evaluation of the Teen Outreach Program in The Pacific Northwest,” the authors examined the Northwest Coalition for Adolescent Health’s Teen Outreach Program (TOP), comprised of six Planned Parenthood affiliate partners. The results of the analysis found that TOP “had an impact in the desirable direction on males causing pregnancies.”
But it also “had an impact in the undesirable direction on females becoming pregnant.”
A 2018 report by Abt Associates could only find slight short-term positive outcomes, but these did not last over an extended period of time.
A policy liaison with the FAMiLY Leader, Daniel Sunne, said of Planned Parenthood teaching kids: “We should recognize the obvious pattern. The last organization government should pay to prevent teen pregnancies is Planned Parenthood.”
The sex education curriculum is merely a way for Planned Parenthood to integrate themselves into the lives of teenagers. As Shane Vander Hart commented, “This is evidence that while the Trump administration has reduced funding to Planned Parenthood, they have not completely defunded the abortion giant and their funding supports Planned Parenthood’s efforts to target adolescents.”
There are far more ethical ways to teach children about sex and their bodies, especially young girls.
Dr. Hanna Klaus, a fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is the founder of the international fertility awareness program, TeenSTAR. Since starting it in 1980, Klaus has experienced great success in preventing and reducing sexual activity in young girls.
