Missouri House votes to screw up sex ed

The Missouri House approved a bill this week that will change sex ed programs throughout the state--and not in a good way.

The bill requires public school students to get permission slips from their parents before taking sex ed, would ban “abortion providers” from providing any class materials, would state that life begins at conception and would have to push for "lifelong monogamous marriage between a man and a woman."

Wow. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Cynthia Davis (who says that contraception is “a way to have all the goodies and not pay the price"), who originally wanted to ban a requirement that students be taught about sexually transmitted diseases. Thankfully, that requirement was reinstated.

I don’t know about the parental permission for sex ed thing--when I was in school we had to get a note if our parents wanted us taken out of the class. And while we never really learned about abortion, a lot of great information on birth control and STDs was given to us by local women’s clinics. But I digress--this bill has nothing to do with caring about young people and their health. It’s about limiting our choices and our knowledge. Period.