Recently, State Representative Dan LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, announced plans to introduce legislation that would ban The University of Wisconsin’s Health Service from providing women with emergency contraception. Defending his stance, the representative cited personal irritation over what he saw as a promiscuous UHS advertisement that had been run in both of UW’s student newspapers before spring break.
LeMahieu, ever mindful of the dangers facing today’s youth, made certain to reassure people that this emergency method of contraception does not deal “with sexually transmitted diseases that are being spread and things like that.” Despite demonstrating such agony over matters of student health, it seems that Rep. LeMahieu, like many of his legislative counterparts across the nation, is missing the point.
Dan LeMahieu’s proposed ban on UHS-distributed emergency contraception is just the latest step taken by conservative politicians to thwart a real solution to a problem stemming from sexual activity among young people. Although living in a Republican dream world is probably a lot of fun for them, U.S. lawmakers who shield themselves from cultural reality are sending their constituents back to the Stone Age. This is most evident on Capitol Hill and in the White House.
With his proposed 2006 budget, President George W. Bush looks to remain financially committed to his personal moral philosophy on sex education.
Limiting federal funding to abstinence-only sex education programs, Bush does not plan to rest, it seems, until every last American youth is chaste. His laughable budgetary outline for national sex education programs prohibits the mention of contraceptives unless pertaining to the contraceptives’ failure. The President might as well throw in a clause whereby sex education programs are required to teach students that sex is only acceptable when used for procreation.
While some people might be uncomfortable acknowledging it, nobody can actually deny that young people in America are sexually active. According to the respected Alan Guttmacher Institute (AIG), more than half of 17-year-olds in the United States have had sex — a statistic that would have Jerry Falwell sweating through his ‘Jesus is my homeboy’ t-shirt. The scary aspect of youth sexuality in America lies not in its mere existence, but in its consequences. AIG reports that 78 percent of teen pregnancies in the United States are unexpected and these make up about one-fourth of the country’s total number of unplanned pregnancies. Further, teen pregnancy rates in the United States are twice as high those in Canada and nine times as high as those in Japan. All of this evidence seems to show that the current U.S. methods of sex education are far from their goals.
Why, considering all of the aforementioned information, do Republican legislators and the President continually promote sex education that is almost universally regarded to be ineffective in solving problems such as teen pregnancy? No matter how much it bothers them, lawmakers cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that young people will continue to have sex. In appeasing their right-wing supporters, many government officials are drastically compromising the public good.
The only solution to the negative consequences of youth sexual activity involves the implementation of comprehensive sex education at the adolescent level. Accordingly, young people must be well educated about contraceptives and have ready access to them.
Maintaining the current government strategy of simply overlooking real social conditions will only worsen the problem. It is impossible for lawmakers to improve a situation they refuse to even acknowledge. As for the legislation about to be proposed by State Representative Dan LeMahieu, restricting emergency contraception is not likely to curb the spring break promiscuity he so despises, but it just might create a few more mouths for the government to feed.
Rob Rossmeissl ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in political science.
