Repro Health Hub

“It wasn’t fun and definitely not like what you see in the movies,” 15-year-old Amy, one of the main characters in ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, reports of her first sexual experience. This exclamation sums up the series’ message about teenage sexuality.

In a culture saturated with sensationalized reports of supposed pregnancy pacts, obsessive coverage of celebrity “baby bumps,” and films highlighting the comical elements of unplanned pregnancies, the “cautionary” television series, another project made in collaboration with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, seeks to set itself apart by painting a graver portrait of the consequences that accompany sex.

“We’re going to tell it in an optimistic, relatable way, and we’re going to be responsible about it. Our story lines are going to resolve in a way that makes it quite clear what’s the right thing to do,” explains Paul Lee, ABC Family president.

The right thing to do? The notion that there is one “right way” to approach complicated sexual issues is troubling, especially given the show’s failure to address adequately all options available to women facing unplanned pregnancies. A review of the series in The New York Times reports that upon learning of Amy’s pregnancy, her friends “tell her she has options, but abortion is apparently not one of them; that choice is dismissed right away in horrified tones.” Is an account of teenage pregnancy that neglects to discuss abortion really “responsible” programming?

By Allison Farer

Today’s a day for thinking about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it’s not all fireworks and tri-color bunting. In 1852, Frederick Douglas said of the Fourth of July, “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.” Douglas was thinking about the unfinished business of the promise of America.

For all our progress, 156 years later, freedoms like personal autonomy and equal citizenship are still in doubt. In her dissenting opinion in Gonzalez v. Carhart (2007), Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg condemned the Supreme Court’s curtailment of the right to late-term abortion, even if a woman’s life were in danger. Justice Ginsburg wrote that nothing less than a “woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature” were in question.

Not to spoil the picnic, but perhaps a new tradition should be to take a few minutes out of the day and listen to Justice Ginsburg’s dissent, delivered from the bench just 15 months ago. Just click here and fast-forward to about seven and a half minutes into the audio. Hear the caution in Justice Ginsburg’s delivery, the trepidation in her voice, and then reconsider the fragility of the freedoms we’re all celebrating today.

Happy Fourth of July.

By Tara Sweeney

A fact that we don’t recognize often enough is that good sexual education should emphasize healthy relationships. The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault has just published a preliminary, extremely depressing report about sexual and physical violence experienced by NYC high school women. Based on more than 1,000 student surveys conducted at four high schools, 16.2% of students had already experienced some kind of sexual violence—keep in mind that almost all of these students are 18 or younger!

The most disturbing result for me was that 14% had experienced sexual violence from someone they were dating. I tend to cherish the belief—apparently actually the illusion—that this generation is growing up with more respect for women and less likelihood of finding sexual violence acceptable. But almost 7% of respondents had been raped by their partners in the last year. That certainly doesn’t suggest any kind of increasing respect for the right to have sex only by choice, not by force.

One major part of the solution is better sex ed—sex ed that includes education about the unacceptability of sexual violence. Legal Momentum even published a report demonstrating how abstinence-only sex ed curricula tend to reinforce victim-blaming and gender stereotypes that encourage sexual violence.

Good sex ed is still so hard to come by for many public schoolers. Here in New York, you can advocate that your State Senator pass the Healthy Teens Act next year, which wasn’t passed by the New York State Senate for the FOURTH year in a row. The Healthy Teens Act would at least start the process of bringing comprehensive sex ed to New York teenagers.

Until that happens, there are few resources for teens in need. The National Institute for Reproductive Health’s Adolescent Health Care Communication Program (AHCCP) is one source of quality sex ed that highlights the importance of healthy relationships. Another great peer education program combating violence among teenagers is Students Taking Action for Respect (STAR). There’s also the Safe House Center, a program run by a crisis center in Michigan. The New Jersey Teen Prevention Education Program also works integrated sexual violence prevention into their broader sexual health education, focusing on the need for clear partner communication in every aspect of a dating relationship.

The NYC Sexual Assault Alliance provides a discreet, pocket-sized map for teenagers, listing locations of health service providers and rape crisis centers that they can turn to for help—a great resource, but these kinds of information can’t substitute for repeated, wide-spread, peer-to-peer and teacher-to-student and parent-to-child discussions of why sexual assault and dating violence are wrong. Providing information to survivors is never enough, as important as it is. We need to be changing the attitudes that tolerate sexual assualt, and doing so requires talking about it.

Thinking about freedom from sexual assault as part of reproductive justice can help leverage the resources of reproductive health organizations to combat dating violence among teenagers and college students, so if you do reproductive health work, start asking if your organization or your peer mentoring group includes anti-sexual violence lessons.

For more information on issues related to sexual violence prevention, visit us at the SAFER blog.