A new report on Mississippi’s sex education programs highlights how disastrous the state’s approach to teen sexuality has been over the past decade. The report, produced by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), notes that Mississippi has consistently had some of the worst sexual health indicators in the country. The state has the second highest rate of teen pregnancies, the second highest rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia infections, and the seventh highest rate of HIV infections.

Proponents of abstinence-only programs typically claim that teaching kids medically accurate information about their bodies will convince them to start having more sex, assuming that young adults need to be protected from sexually explicit content that could corrupt their innocence. But Mississippi throws a wrench into that logic.

Even though teens have been shielded from what might be deemed ‘inappropriate” sex ed content, SIECUS found that kids in the Magnolia State are actually having sex earlier and more frequently than the national average. Predictably, they’re also much less likely to know how to avoid unintended pregnancies:
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Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States
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Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States

This dynamic […]