N.C. Senate Panel Approves Changes to Sex Education Bill

On Wednesday, a sex education bill that would require all state school systems to offer sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders information about contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and how to prevent STDs cleared the Senate Mental Health & Youth Services Committee. However, changes made to the measure pleased neither its chief House sponsor nor some social conservatives.

As revised, the bill would be part of a broader health education curriculum that would continue teaching abstinence until marriage, the current offering in almost all the state’s 115 districts. Parents would be able to opt their children out of the contraceptive lessons.

Under the House version, schools would be required to teach two separate tracks, one abstinence-based and one comprehensive. Parents would be required to fill out a permission slip for their child to participate in either track, or choose that they receive no sex education at all.

Rep. Susan Fischer (D-Buncombe) dislikes the Senate changes to the bill. "It will not give parents the full spectrum of choices that we had wanted to offer them," she said. "It will limit our ability to get that solid, medically accurate information out to all children, and those who need it the most in a lot of cases."

Bill Brooks of the North Carolina Family Policy Council said his group considers the Senate version no better than the House one, and he worries educators will use the requirement that the new curriculum be "peer-reviewed and accepted by professionals and credentialed experts" to subvert the message that abstinence is the only sure way to prevent pregnancy and STDs.

If the bill wins Senate approval, negotiating a compromise between the two versions may follow.

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