Not surprisingly, but still refreshingly, Obama’s proposed 2010 budget looks pretty good for women. Featuring moderate increases in money allocated to global health, family planning, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the most exciting part has got to be the complete cutting of funds to abstinence-only education, and putting $110 million towards the new Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative. This funding will go to researching which types of sex education actually work, and which ones—cough, abstinence-only, cough—need to be done away with. It’s so exciting to see the mistakes of the past be rectified right now, with something as seemingly insignificant as a change in a few numbers.
Comprehensive sex ed ensures that if and when teenagers decide to have sex, they are informed about, and have access to, effective methods of contraception. Scare tactics and simply acting like the problem doesn’t exist are incredibly ignorant strategies that have failed time and time again, and it is about time that we deal with this problem in a realistic way, if we truly care about keeping teen pregnancy, abortion, and STI rates down. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of these new budget changes down the line, and until then, I hope that President Obama will continue to make the right decisions when it comes to sex education and any other women’s issues.
The proposed budget for the Department of Health and Human Services is up at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/hhs.pdf. Please check it out and let me know what you think. Have a great week!
Lauren Laskey
VAYD Women’s Caucus Chair
lauren.laskey@gmail.com
