JACKSON, Miss. — With one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies in the nation, Mississippi public schools fervently defend their state’s standard of abstinence-only sex education.
19-year-old Maggie Joslin conceived her first child during her junior year of high school, well after she completed the required sex-ed course. She believes that the introduction of an all-inclusive sexual health curriculum that covers various contraceptive methods would be both immoral and ineffective.
“I don’t want teachers passing out condoms to my kids,” Joslin says, stroking her swollen belly containing her third child. “Plus, we all know this birth control business is bullshit anyway. I tried that magic patch I saw on TV. I swear to you, it would barely stay wrapped around his penis. And it made lovemaking so uncomfortable. And I got knocked up anyway!”
A recent high school graduate also endorses the current public school policy. Jenny-May Smith graduated with the highest of honors, being that she attended all four years without giving birth a single time. “It’s inappropriate and presumptuous to assume that all teenagers are interested in having sex,” Smith claims, “or that we’d want to do it without consequences like STDs.” Smith announced that she takes pride in the fact that she has never been corrupted by the use of contraceptives, until she was informed that the controversial “Plan B pill” fell under that category. “Oh shit—forget what I said, then,” she whispered. “Also, please don’t tell my parents.”
The legitimacy of a curriculum focusing on saving sex for marriage has been widely reprehended. The Mississippi School Board concedes that while statistics are not favorable at the moment, they remain unreasonably hopeful for the future. “It’s our moral obligation to wait this one out,” says Ken Rutter, a board member. “After all, teenagers won’t have raging hormones forever.”
Conservative parents across the nation have been advocating the role of mothers and fathers when it comes to the teaching of reproductive matters, saying that schools should simply omit any instruction or information regarding genitals. Maggie Joslin agrees. “I know I wish my mother would’ve told me about doing it standing up or under water,” she claims. “I’d probably be in college right now if she had.”
