It is more important than ever for policymakers to bring special care to educational equity, quality, and inclusion. While broad-based DEI initiatives have their gaps and shortcomings, one thing they offered that we’re now losing is a framework within which it’s possible to respond to shortfalls and issues as they come up or are discovered, because the greater mandate was already in place. Under a status quo that forces us to pursue equity and inclusion in a more atomized, piecemeal way, intersectional concerns are especially vulnerable.
Sex education, a subject which has always had its challenges, is one of those intersectional issues that deserves careful attention in these times. Thankfully, a recently reintroduced bill, the Real Education and Access for Healthy Youth Act (REAHYA), has these intersections in mind. Supported by Representative Alma Adams and Senators Cory Booker and Mazie Hirono, this bill would provide targeted funding opportunities for scientifically grounded and inclusive youth sex education programs. Critically, the bill would ensure that students with disabilities are included in these offerings. In this commentary, we’ll talk about why it’s essential for young people to receive a meaningful sex education, and why explicitly including young people with disabilities would be a major win not just for them, but for all of us.
Why Comprehensive Sex Education?
Comprehensive sex education not only helps young people understand the plethora of options they have when it comes to if, when, and how they decide to start a family: it also teaches them critical information about their anatomy, how to consent, and how to build and maintain healthy relationships. This information is necessary for all youth, including young people with disabilities.
The recent reintroduction of REAHYA includes the addition of the word “access” in the acronym, a change from the 2019 version of the bill. This is an important and necessary addition for many reasons. In the United States, over half of students with disabilities do not receive appropriate, accessible sex education. Kings Floyd, research and policy associate at The Century Foundation and co-author of this commentary, shares some of her experience with being denied comprehensive sex education in public school:
The rationale for excluding students with disabilities from accessing comprehensive sex education originates in bias and stigma. Educators, health care professionals, and even parents and guardians often wrongly assume that young people with disabilities will not be having sex (and will consequently not need to learn how to prevent pregnancy and STIs or how to have consensual and pleasurable sexual experiences), will not participate in romantic relationships, or will not one day want to start a family of their own.
They made me choose between being able to walk and my being able to understand ovulation.
I remember being pulled out of my ninth-grade biology class during the units on the reproductive cycle and sexual health and wellness, because the school thought that was a good time to schedule physical therapy. They made me choose between being able to walk and my being able to understand ovulation. I had been pulled out of PE class because I had been pulled out of dodgeball and flag football, so why not the sex education seminars too? As a student with a physical disability enrolled in mainstream education, I was regularly excluded from an education afforded to my peers because educators did not believe this material was relevant to me. These attitudes and assumptions isolated me and my peers from basic knowledge and resources.
Such assumptions are damaging even in individual cases where they might be true: comprehensive sex education can still be a critical resource for all young people to have access to even if they do not plan to have sex, date, or start a family. It teaches about human anatomy and biology, how to understand your body and reproductive health organs, how to prevent sexual violence, and even how to advocate for yourself and others if and when sexual violence does occur, which every child deserves to learn. In fact, young people with disabilities are at a higher risk of sexual violence, but are too often missing out on this important information.
Sex Education in the United States Is Not Yet Accessible or Equitable
Ensuring that everyone who wants children can have them is a core tenet of reproductive justice, and improving education for young people about their bodies and reproductive systems is critical. However, this administration’s pronatalist agenda is riddled with white supremacist and ableist rhetoric, from Trump’s multiple executive orders on education, to limiting curricula in public schools based on race and gender, to mandating that teachers have actions pursued against them for supporting transitioning students. The administration has also cut funding for programs such as Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs (TPPP), and has rolled back Title IX protections. These measures all threaten to undermine decades of progress in gender equity. Pronatalism, with a history entrenched in eugenics, racism, and sexism, has no place in America’s classrooms.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that all children, including students with disabilities, are entitled to a free and appropriate public education, especially if the knowledge relates to life skills, like knowing what a menstrual cycle is and how pregnancy happens. Similarly, the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD), a United Nations international human rights treaty and to which the United States is a signatory, states that youth with disabilities should be afforded the same range and quality of sexual and reproductive health services—including sex education—enjoyed by able-bodied youth. Yet, even though the United States has signed on to the CRPD, the U.S. Senate has still failed to ratify the treaty, meaning students with disabilities still lack the support of this framework when it comes to their needs and access to critical health-based services and information.
Only twenty-six states’ sex education programs are required to be medically accurate; twenty-eight states prioritize or only teach an abstinence policy.
As it stands, only twenty-six states’ sex education programs are required to be medically accurate; twenty-eight states prioritize or only teach an abstinence policy. Even outside of the school environment, the Trump administration has actively tried to curtail access to evidence-based sexual and reproductive health information on federal websites as well. Since January, the administration has taken down ReproductiveRights.gov (a resource providing critical information about patient rights and how to access care), erased contraception guidelines and pages related to HIV testing, and censored other resources, such as by scrubbing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website of any mention of policies that protect abortion care.
Policy Solutions
Thankfully, there are still ways to ensure young people across the country can access comprehensive sex education, and innovative policymaking ideas to help integrate them into the law of the land. REAHYA is just such an innovation: it’s a groundbreaking bill that would establish grants under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and invest in medically accurate, comprehensive sex education and youth health services, as well as providing educators with the training to do so. REAHYA could be an opportunity for bipartisanship, and a chance to advance policies that foster student agency and access to healthy, accurate resources, rather than cut funding to programs that educate teens on youth pregnancy, contraception, and abstinence. Here is an excellent inflection point for turning the tide back against the efforts to dismantle our country’s educational institutions.
Another step policymakers could take would be for the Senate to ratify the CRPD and align the United States with peer countries like Canada, Japan, and France in protecting the rights of people with disabilities. The CRPD is inspired by the Americans with Disabilities Act and sets a global legal standard for disability rights: let’s bring it full circle and live up to the benchmark we ourselves once set.
Tags: disability rights, educational equity, sexual health
Sex Ed For All Must Include Students with Disabilities
It is more important than ever for policymakers to bring special care to educational equity, quality, and inclusion. While broad-based DEI initiatives have their gaps and shortcomings, one thing they offered that we’re now losing is a framework within which it’s possible to respond to shortfalls and issues as they come up or are discovered, because the greater mandate was already in place. Under a status quo that forces us to pursue equity and inclusion in a more atomized, piecemeal way, intersectional concerns are especially vulnerable.
Sex education, a subject which has always had its challenges, is one of those intersectional issues that deserves careful attention in these times. Thankfully, a recently reintroduced bill, the Real Education and Access for Healthy Youth Act (REAHYA), has these intersections in mind. Supported by Representative Alma Adams and Senators Cory Booker and Mazie Hirono, this bill would provide targeted funding opportunities for scientifically grounded and inclusive youth sex education programs. Critically, the bill would ensure that students with disabilities are included in these offerings. In this commentary, we’ll talk about why it’s essential for young people to receive a meaningful sex education, and why explicitly including young people with disabilities would be a major win not just for them, but for all of us.
Why Comprehensive Sex Education?
Comprehensive sex education not only helps young people understand the plethora of options they have when it comes to if, when, and how they decide to start a family: it also teaches them critical information about their anatomy, how to consent, and how to build and maintain healthy relationships. This information is necessary for all youth, including young people with disabilities.
The recent reintroduction of REAHYA includes the addition of the word “access” in the acronym, a change from the 2019 version of the bill. This is an important and necessary addition for many reasons. In the United States, over half of students with disabilities do not receive appropriate, accessible sex education. Kings Floyd, research and policy associate at The Century Foundation and co-author of this commentary, shares some of her experience with being denied comprehensive sex education in public school:
The rationale for excluding students with disabilities from accessing comprehensive sex education originates in bias and stigma. Educators, health care professionals, and even parents and guardians often wrongly assume that young people with disabilities will not be having sex (and will consequently not need to learn how to prevent pregnancy and STIs or how to have consensual and pleasurable sexual experiences), will not participate in romantic relationships, or will not one day want to start a family of their own.
I remember being pulled out of my ninth-grade biology class during the units on the reproductive cycle and sexual health and wellness, because the school thought that was a good time to schedule physical therapy. They made me choose between being able to walk and my being able to understand ovulation. I had been pulled out of PE class because I had been pulled out of dodgeball and flag football, so why not the sex education seminars too? As a student with a physical disability enrolled in mainstream education, I was regularly excluded from an education afforded to my peers because educators did not believe this material was relevant to me. These attitudes and assumptions isolated me and my peers from basic knowledge and resources.
Such assumptions are damaging even in individual cases where they might be true: comprehensive sex education can still be a critical resource for all young people to have access to even if they do not plan to have sex, date, or start a family. It teaches about human anatomy and biology, how to understand your body and reproductive health organs, how to prevent sexual violence, and even how to advocate for yourself and others if and when sexual violence does occur, which every child deserves to learn. In fact, young people with disabilities are at a higher risk of sexual violence, but are too often missing out on this important information.
Sex Education in the United States Is Not Yet Accessible or Equitable
Ensuring that everyone who wants children can have them is a core tenet of reproductive justice, and improving education for young people about their bodies and reproductive systems is critical. However, this administration’s pronatalist agenda is riddled with white supremacist and ableist rhetoric, from Trump’s multiple executive orders on education, to limiting curricula in public schools based on race and gender, to mandating that teachers have actions pursued against them for supporting transitioning students. The administration has also cut funding for programs such as Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs (TPPP), and has rolled back Title IX protections. These measures all threaten to undermine decades of progress in gender equity. Pronatalism, with a history entrenched in eugenics, racism, and sexism, has no place in America’s classrooms.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that all children, including students with disabilities, are entitled to a free and appropriate public education, especially if the knowledge relates to life skills, like knowing what a menstrual cycle is and how pregnancy happens. Similarly, the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (CRPD), a United Nations international human rights treaty and to which the United States is a signatory, states that youth with disabilities should be afforded the same range and quality of sexual and reproductive health services—including sex education—enjoyed by able-bodied youth. Yet, even though the United States has signed on to the CRPD, the U.S. Senate has still failed to ratify the treaty, meaning students with disabilities still lack the support of this framework when it comes to their needs and access to critical health-based services and information.
As it stands, only twenty-six states’ sex education programs are required to be medically accurate; twenty-eight states prioritize or only teach an abstinence policy. Even outside of the school environment, the Trump administration has actively tried to curtail access to evidence-based sexual and reproductive health information on federal websites as well. Since January, the administration has taken down ReproductiveRights.gov (a resource providing critical information about patient rights and how to access care), erased contraception guidelines and pages related to HIV testing, and censored other resources, such as by scrubbing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website of any mention of policies that protect abortion care.
Policy Solutions
Thankfully, there are still ways to ensure young people across the country can access comprehensive sex education, and innovative policymaking ideas to help integrate them into the law of the land. REAHYA is just such an innovation: it’s a groundbreaking bill that would establish grants under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and invest in medically accurate, comprehensive sex education and youth health services, as well as providing educators with the training to do so. REAHYA could be an opportunity for bipartisanship, and a chance to advance policies that foster student agency and access to healthy, accurate resources, rather than cut funding to programs that educate teens on youth pregnancy, contraception, and abstinence. Here is an excellent inflection point for turning the tide back against the efforts to dismantle our country’s educational institutions.
Another step policymakers could take would be for the Senate to ratify the CRPD and align the United States with peer countries like Canada, Japan, and France in protecting the rights of people with disabilities. The CRPD is inspired by the Americans with Disabilities Act and sets a global legal standard for disability rights: let’s bring it full circle and live up to the benchmark we ourselves once set.
Tags: disability rights, educational equity, sexual health