Safe-sex activists oppose abstinence-only texts in Texas

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Texas education officials and activists on all sides of the sex-education debate are battling over the adoption of new health textbooks for the state's 7,800 public schools.

Texas law enacted in 1995 is emphatic: "Any course materials and instruction relating to human sexuality, sexually-transmitted diseases, or human immunodeficiency virus or acquired immune deficiency syndrome ... must present abstinence from sexual activity as the preferred choice of behavior in relationship to all sexual activity for unmarried persons of school age."

But Planned Parenthood Federation of America lobbyists and safe-sex advocates are fighting against middle- and high-school textbooks that teach the benefits of sexual abstinence instead of advocating condom use by sexually active teenagers.

"Information on family planning and disease prevention is not in the books," Samantha Smoot, president of the Texas Freedom Network, said at a State Board of Education textbook adoption hearing last month at which more than 315 people testified.

Ms. Smoot, who is leading a "Protect Our Kids Campaign" with Planned Parenthood and other groups to get comprehensive sex-education information into Texas' proposed textbooks, said the state's abstinence-only approach was insufficient. She said students need information about condoms and other means to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases and HIV.

"I happen to believe personally that in this day and age, the most important lifesaving piece of information a teenager can walk out of a health class with is that, at whatever age they become sexually active, they need to wear a condom each and every time," Ms. Smoot told the board.

Last month, Ms. Smoot came to Washington to rally support against abstinence-only textbooks at a conference hosted by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. She told conference attendees that abstinence-education advocates "bully children, bully teachers, and now they are bullying textbook publishers."

Texas is considering books from three publishers -- Holt, Rinehart and Winston; Glencoe/McGraw Hill and Thomson-Delmar Learning -- to replace middle- and high-school texts that have been used for a decade. The state is the country's second largest market for textbook publishers, spending more than $570 million a year.

To comply with the state's mandate to promote sexual abstinence by teenagers, publishers have produced separate supplemental booklets, videotapes and CD-ROM discs for teachers, called "ancillary materials," that include information about birth control, sexually transmitted diseases and condom use that is not in the student textbooks.

The supplemental materials, which critics say do not comply with state law, were not formally offered for state adoption with the proposed textbooks, but publishers said they would be provided anyway to schools that purchased the books.

State curriculum standards that predate the 1995 law, called Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, say health textbooks must "analyze the effectiveness of barrier protection and other contraceptive methods including the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, keeping in mind the effectiveness of remaining abstinent until marriage."

Kyleen Wright, president of Texans for Life and a proponent of abstinence education, said Texas had become "one of the top three states for significantly reducing teen pregnancy, live births to teens and abortions" since its Legislature "changed course, making abstinence the law and standard in classrooms."

The board's final vote on the adoption of the health textbooks is set for Nov. 5.