By Haley Verre
Staff Writer

One of the most controversial issues in school systems is how sex education should be taught to high school students. No matter how you feel about it, there is no doubt that sex is stigmatized in Western culture.

Westford Public Schools takes an “abstinence-based” approach to teaching sex education to its students. While it is not an “abstinence only” program, it still holds on to the old-fashioned notion that there should not be sex before marriage, and that belief is more important than sexual health and consent.

A program with an abstinence-stressed approach is not only harmful to the students on psychological and physical levels, but it also presents them with unhealthy views on sexuality.

Going into sex education, I was expecting to learn about just that. But it turns out,  it is almost avoided altogether. If anything, we talked about anything but the actual sex.

I think the majority of the program, in the required freshmen health class, consisted of us attempting to label sex organs. Of course, this is important and we should have a good idea of how our reproductive parts work.

We did learn about contraceptives and their efficiency, which is a slightly progressive move for the school, but there’s a reason the school is not distributing these to students.

The school does not want to appear as if it is promoting sexual behavior, especially in a conservative town where the general assumption is that teens here are not having sex.

It seems like teen pregnancy rates in Westford are relatively low, so why is this a problem?

First of all, there is a high possibility that students are seeking birth prevention on there own, which is why it is especially important that they learn about it. Students are not even allowed to look at contraceptives until senior year and by then health class is no longer mandatory.

Secondly, the school does not teach students about how consent works.

One of the most important things about learning about sex is consent and boundaries. The education focuses on abstaining from sex, but educators refuse to face the reality of the situation. Students will have sex regardless of what you tell them.

I remember watching this video with a woman whose mother was a victim of rape. The woman urged the students to refrain from sex until marriage. Showing us this video is harmful to students because it gives us an opinion from a woman who has an unhealthy outlook on sex because of her background.

An abstinence-based sex education allows students to associate sex with guilt, which is something people will hold on to. Not everyone will get married. Not everyone will have one sexual parter. And that’s okay.

Sex is a natural behavior that can be healthy and even foster loving relationships if students are safe about it and understand the consequences.

Nobody should be shaming and scaring students into abstinence. Whether a student decides to have sex or not before marriage is a completely private matter.

Their bodies, their choice.