The attack on comprehensive sexual education, from federal law to the SBC

In initiatives to remove “woke” content from school curricula across the United States, comprehensive sexual education — or CSE — is under attack.

CSE programs diverge from abstinence-only curricula by nature of the problems they attempt to solve.

Abstinence-only curricula target particular behaviors or sexual experiences sex educators deem risky, dangerous or immoral, like premarital sex or homosexuality. In turn, rather than sharing knowledge about the ins and outs of reproductive health, they simply warn against all sexual behavior.

In contrast, CSE programs teach about sexuality, sexual behavior, sexual safety and bodily autonomy in age-appropriate ways. So, curricula vary by grade.

This offers students a more “comprehensive” understanding of their reproductive health, from the changes of puberty to what qualifies a sexual encounter as safe, appropriate and legal. Teachers also may discuss sexuality and gender identity and teach students how to foster healthy social relationships in general — such as addressing homophobic bullying or gender-based discrimination.

A systematic literature review published in the 2021 Journal of Adolescent Health examined three decades of research about school-based CSE programs, defining them as curricula that teach students about the “various dimensions” of sexuality, like reproductive anatomy or how to give and revoke consent.

Researchers found CSE programs have an immensely positive impact on teens’ health and well-being outcomes.

This includes a reduction in homophobic bullying, lower chances of experiencing dating and intimate partner violence, as well as lower risk of child sexual abuse.

In part, this seems to occur because students learn to have and assert ownership over their bodies, making them more likely to feel comfortable talking to trusted adults about their sexual health and more likely to recognize and report abuse if it happens. They also are more likely to respect peers whose bodies look or present different from their own.

And because these students gain a comprehensive understanding of the meaning and risks of sexual activities, they start having sex much later than those who go through abstinence-only sex ed. In turn, they are less likely to contract sexually transmitted infections or get pregnant.

What’s happening to CSE?

So, if CSE has been proved to have such positive outcomes for children and teenagers who go through it, what’s the problem?

According to the Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States — or SIECUS — sexual education is under legislative attack. Various bills have been proposed over the past few years attempting to regress the state of sexual education in schools.

Many of these bills support abstinence-only curricula or changes to sexual education that promote homophobic attitudes or allow medical misinformation.

In fact, the SIECUS 2025 report says many states do not require sexual education in schools to be medically accurate. Some laws require teaching inaccuracies.

One of these bills, which has passed in multiple states, requires schools to show students a video called Meet Baby Olivia as part of their pregnancy education. The animated video depicts the growth of a fetus named Olivia from fertilization to the final weeks of pregnancy, claiming to be medically accurate.

However, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement in response to the video, denying its medical accuracy and claiming it is “designed to manipulate the emotions of viewers rather than share evidence-based, scientific information.” The statement says the video’s narrator makes multiple claims for which there is no scientific, or even religious and philosophical, consensus.

Among a few pieces of misinformation stated in the video, the narrator claims Olivia’s heartbeat can be detected just three weeks into her gestational period. However, OBGYNs say a pulse may be heard in an ultrasound as early as week six or seven of pregnancy. At that point, the heart organ is not yet formed, so the pulse cannot be attributed as a heartbeat.

Misinformation and pro-life values

Meet Baby Olivia was created by Live Action, a pro-life organization staunchly opposed to abortion in all circumstances. On its website, LiveAction asserts multiple times life begins at fertilization.

LiveAction claims ‘abortion is never medically necessary to save a woman’s life.’

And on its “Hard Cases” page, when addressing ethical solutions for pregnant women whose lives are in danger due to pregnancy complications, LiveAction claims “abortion is never medically necessary to save a woman’s life.” It also argues that, because some rape victims choose to carry out pregnancies conceived during their assaults, all rape-induced pregnancies should be carried to term.

However, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has publicly stated that, sometimes, “pregnancy termination in the form of an abortion is the only medical intervention that can preserve a patient’s health or save their life.”

It is true that pregnant women diagnosed with conditions like ectopic pregnancies, which are always fatal for fetuses, often are treated with abortions to prevent life-threatening bleeding or infection and preserve the woman’s future fertility.

Additionally, many rape and sexual abuse survivors carry diverse opinions about abortion, so no survivor-community consensus exists on the matter of rape-induced pregnancy.

Despite this misinformation, in the 2024 legislative session, several states introduced “Meet Baby Olivia Bills,” and one was enacted into law in Tennessee as HB-2435. In the previous year, a version of the bill had been enacted in North Dakota as HB-1265.

This year, another version of the bill was proposed in Missouri as HB-461 and in Oklahoma as SB-587.

Among other notable bills related to sexual education proposed this year were two in Texas, which have not passed.

Texas HB-196 would require health education state that “human life begins at conception,” despite this being a contested statement in the medical, religious and philosophical communities. Additionally, Texas HB-344 would limit instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, although the bill would not criminalize conversations started by student questions.

“This year overall, 135 bills that aimed to place restrictions on sexual education in public schools were introduced.”

This year overall, 135 bills that aimed to place restrictions on sexual education in public schools were introduced.

Currently, 17 states require sexual education to be abstinence-only, seven states require instruction on nonheteronormative sexualities to frame them as unacceptable, and seven states prohibit the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity altogether in “Don’t Say Gay” policies.

Only 26 states require sex and HIV education to be medically accurate.

For example, 12 years ago, my sex ed teacher told our class it was “possible and common” to become pregnant by “swallowing” during oral sex. In reality, this is impossible but still allowed to be taught in half of the country.

Project 2025

If we know how important it can be to the health and well-being of teens, why attack comprehensive sexual education in schools?

BNG already covered how the recently proposed Interstate Obscenity Definition Act supports Project 2025’s efforts to make pornography illegal, then redefine CSE as pornography.

This new collection of proposed laws compounds these attempts to criminalize and eliminate conversations about sexual freedom that began the moment the Trump presidency started. And they target “woke” values.

For instance, an executive order signed Jan. 20 titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” denounced “gender ideology” that promotes LGBTQ identities. It also cited only two biological sexes by which a person may identify in an official, documented capacity.

Medical professionals quickly criticized the order for its definition of male and female, which defines the genders by certain cell formations. However, LGBTQ identities aside, sex chromosomes can form in a number of ways, which these definitions exclude.

Despite criticism, on Jan. 29, another executive order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” was published, which asserted schools may no longer “indoctrinate” students with “false ideologies,” such as those discussed in the previous order, or other social justice-focused attitudes.

Southern Baptist Convention, too

In line with this attack on woke ideology in American law is the SBC’s resolution, which BNG also reported.

Among other “woke” things, the resolution addresses gender, sexuality and pregnancy. It denounces same-sex marriage, transgender identity and attacks IVF as a roundabout form of abortion.

It also pins the Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v. Hodges in the corner for all of this, using Scripture to urge the ruling be overturned to do things like “recognize the biological reality of male and female, protect children’s innocence against sexual predation, affirm and strengthen parental rights in education and health care,” and “incentivize family formation in life-affirming ways.”

Alongside all these new laws, the SBC, too, is attempting to firmly monopolize its preferred understanding of sexual health and education among its own congregations.

But with all these laws, executive orders and resolutions, does failing to properly educate children and teens on sexual freedom and bodily autonomy protect their innocence against predation, if the only thing they know about sex is that they should not do it? Does creating shame about sex strengthen parental rights if kids are unable to understand and articulate experiences of abuse to their parents? Is it life-affirming to keep teens in the dark on contraception and conception processes when we know knowledge will prevent them from teen pregnancy?

It seems like these restrictions are more about controlling “woke” culture than they are about protecting kids, teens and their families.

 

Mallory Challis is a summer staff writer for BNG. She is a Master of Divinity Student at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and is a former BNG Clemons Fellow.

 

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