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'Sex education is long overdue': Texans ask state board to rethink curriculum as it considers new proposal
Ariana Rodriguez, an activist in the field of sex education reform, said she'll never forget her experience with sexual education in high school.
"My school brought in a couple who explained to students that we're all roses. As roses, every time we have premarital sex, we lost a petal," Rodriguez said at a State Board of Education hearing Monday morning. "They ended the presentation stating that no one wants a rose without any petals and, therefore, no one wants a person who has had many partners. The students around me sobbed as they heard they were unworthy of love simply because of their sexual activity."
That experience drove Rodriguez—as well as others with similar tales, sexual education leaders and parents—to testify Monday morning before the State Board of Education to ask that the state expand its sex education curriculum to include more information about contraception, STI prevention, abortion access and sexual health for LGBTQ+ people. The hearing came as part of the state's plan to update its sex-ed curriculum for the first time in 23 years.
By the start of the meeting, more than 260 had signed up to speak. No vote was taken Monday, but the state board will hold another meeting in September for a preliminary vote on the new curriculum, with a final vote to come in November.
Adding new topics, keeping others in place
The proposed changes to the existing curriculum, released ahead of the meeting, center primarily around teaching information about sexual violence and sex trafficking. The state board is also considering a new requirement that contraception, such as condoms and birth control, be discussed in seventh and eighth grades, where previously it was only required in high school.
The rest of the curriculum still heavily focuses on abstinence until marriage. But many speakers at the hearing Monday pushed the state to adopt a more comprehensive and inclusive curriculum, attacking the lack of sex education on abortions and contraception, which some experts in attendance said contributed to the high rate of teen pregnancy in the state.
Texas ranked as the fourth highest state in the U.S. (including the District of Columbia) for teen pregnancy in 2016, according to data from the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
A more inclusive curriculum
Other speakers primarily focused on the benefits of providing inclusive sex education for LGBTQ+ people, saying it could help make a safer and fairer learning environment for them and even reduce absenteeism, a common result of bullying against the queer community.
"Sex education is long overdue," in Texas, said University of Houston law student Emma Brockway. Brockway was one of many people who told the board Monday that the state's curriculum failed LGBTQ+ people, including herself—she said she learned nothing that could help her as a lesbian when she was in public school growing up.
"The importance of inclusion of the LGBTQ community in sex education cannot be overstated," said Heather Frederick, OutYouth's Texas Gender and Sexuality Alliance Coordinator.
Some conservative groups were ready ahead of the meeting to fight back against the push to create an LGBTQ+-inclusive sexual education curriculum.
"Leftist LGBT advocacy groups are calling this a 'once in-a-generation opportunity' to attack Texas' abstinence focused approach and teach highly sexualized LGBT propaganda starting in kindergarten," an email from the conservative advocacy group Texas Values said on Friday, according to the Texas Tribune.
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(Paxton Smith/Instagram)
Paxton Smith’s 2021 valedictory speech at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas wasn’t the same speech she had previously shared with school administrators. She dropped the approved speech and made a case for women’s reproductive rights after lawmakers passed the Texas "Heartbeat Bill.”
Her advocacy made news on NPR, YouTubeTV and in The Guardian. Just over a year later, the “war on (women’s) rights” she forewarned has come to a head as the U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion access.
“It is up to the people to show up and show the courts and the politicians that we won’t sit back and let this happen,” Smith told Austonia Friday morning. “We will show up, we will fight back. Before, we were scared of them, now they should be scared of us.”
Now a University of Texas sophomore and abortion rights activist, 19-year-old Smith said she wanted to give the same speech in the “the most public way possible” to reach “as many people as possible who don't agree that I deserve this right.”
However, she says the response was “actually overwhelmingly positive” and supportive of her cause. According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
The speech opened up further opportunities for activism: she advocated for reproductive rights at the International Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, interviewed with Variety magazine and spoke to tens of thousands at Austin’s Bans Off Our Bodies protest at the Texas Capitol in May.
Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national nonprofit organization that helps fund abortions or medication abortion—like Plan C pills—in all 50 states. Most recently, Smith has been attending protests in Washington, D.C. leading up to the ruling.
“This is land of the free. This is where you get to choose how you live your life,” Smith said. “Overturning Roe v. Wade violates everything that we have come to believe about what it means to live in this country. I think a lot of people aren't willing to accept that this is a human right that is most likely just going to be gone for over half of the country within the next couple of weeks.”
Bracing for the next steps, Smith gave some tips for supporters:
- Find a protest to attend.
- “I would say invite somebody to go to those protests with you, invite a couple of friends, invite people into the movement,” Smith said.
- Talk about the issue on social media—use the platform you have.
- “Have these kinds of conversations where people can just talk about their fears and then find ways to go and advocate for yourself,” Smith said.
- Volunteer at a nonprofit near you.
“I feel like a lot of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have within the abortion rights world is that people are not making a scene, not protesting, not putting the effort into ensuring that the government doesn't take away this right,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that if you're not doing anything, don't expect the best scenario, expect the worst because that's the direction that we're going in.”
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(Council Member Chito Vela/Twitter)
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, Friday morning. Moments later, Austin City Council set a special meeting for next month to pass a resolution aimed at decriminalizing abortion.
The GRACE Act, which stands for guarding the right to abortion care for everyone, is a twofold plan submitted by council member Jose “Chito” Vela. It recommends that city funds shouldn’t be used to surveil, catalog, report or investigate abortions. It also recommends that police make investigating abortion their lowest priority.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who co-sponsored the resolution along with council members Paige Ellis, Kathie Tovo and Mayor Steve Adler, said the importance of the GRACE Act cannot be overstated.
“By introducing this resolution during a special session, City Council is doubling down on fighting back for reproductive health,” Fuentes said. “Items like the GRACE Act will promote essential healthcare while enabling individuals to exercise their bodily freedom.”
The act takes an approach similar to when former council member Greg Casar moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Ultimately, state law doesn't allow city officials to order police chiefs to adopt specific enforcement policies so the resolution would be a request to Police Chief Joe Chacon. In May, Politico reported that Vela is having "ongoing conversations" with Chacon about the proposal.
Austonia contacted Attorney General Ken Paxton for comment on the GRACE Act but did not hear back by time of publication. On Friday, Paxton celebrated the overturning of Roe and announced an annual office holiday on June 24 in recognition of the high court's decision.
In a press release, Vela said the Texas state government has a history of overturning municipal protections of human rights. Thirty days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Texas will ban all abortions, with exceptions only to save the life of a pregnant patient or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
Still, Vela expressed hope for the GRACE Act’s longevity. Council’s special meeting on it is set for the week of July 18.
“We know this resolution is legally sound, and Austin is not alone in this fight,” Vela said. “We are working with several other cities who are equally horrified by the prospect of an abortion ban and want to do everything they can to protect their residents.”
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