Abortion and Sex Education (2004)

Click here to return to the Articles and Opinion Pieces Index

Abortion and Sex Education

Opinion piece by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward. Published in The Age , 21 November 2004

There are lots of jokes about how people stop having babies when they find out what causes it, and maybe the abortion debate is that simple. We need to make sure men and women know what causes it so they can decide if that is what they want. This is also known as sex education.

Nobody could argue with the proposition that prevention is better than cure, that the use of contraception is better than abortion. Nobody could not prefer to educate men and women, boys and girls, in matters of sex so that they can make an informed choice about whether or not they have sex and whether or not they will use contraception. Better sex education has to mean that unwanted pregnancies and abortions will fall. Abortion will never be celebrated. It is a choice of last resort.

It is unclear whether Australia's abortion rate is increasing, or even whether it is high by world standards. What is clear is that it affects women of all ages, including very young teenagers, children really. Women are most likely to abort however between the ages of 20 and 24.

Almost three quarters of pregnant girls between 12 and 14 years of age have abortions, presumably with their parents' shocked knowledge and legal consent. For pregnant teenagers overall it is just over half.

While abortion should remain a woman's choice, if we want to reduce the abortion rate then we have to get serious about sex education. Australia's teenage abortion rates underscore the need that we do this earlier rather than later.

Not we, the nation's teachers, who, in such a sensitive matter will either be roused on for not teaching values or for teaching the wrong ones. We, the nation's parents.

Sex 1A is apparently taught pretty well in Australia. Girls and boys learn about the biology of sex surprisingly comprehensively. They may also be told in the class room that they do not have to have sex and that they can say no.

Some schools offer a special course, Sex 3A, where girls are given dolls which wake and cry at inconvenient times and have to be attended to, in the vain hope that it will put them off having the real thing. Apparently some girls find the idea of being needed 24/7 so wonderful, it actually spurs them on but in any case, it is a pity to discourage motherhood by teaching young women that it is a burden.

We the nation's parents must be able to do better. It is we who need to have quite direct discussions with our sons and daughters about the right to say no, respect for the other's right to say no, the importance of trust and love in sex, the vulnerability to which such intimacy exposes us. We talk a great deal about peer pressure in the nation's secondary schools - a quarter of adolescents say they have sex AGAINST THEIR WISHES. Around a fifth of teenagers have unprotected sex under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, so alcohol education might be useful too. Other parents might go further and urge abstinence before marriage on religious and moral grounds. But only very hopeful parents would believe any of this is the end of the conversation.

We live in such a highly sexualized age, the chances of sons and daughters having sexual relations before marriage or even adult-age commitments are extremely high.

So there needs to be a further conversation about the personal consequences of unwanted pregnancies and the advisability of contraception. The contraception conversation, I suspect, is the one less often had. It is amazing how many parents are sure their teenagers are virgins. How convenient. The results of a 2002 National survey suggest half of teenage girls and boys are no longer virgins by the time they are sixteen. Look around the Year 10 class room. How can you be sure your child is in the virgin half of the class? The risk is too high to take a gamble. Have the conversation about contraception instead.

Only 40% of Australian students rely on their mothers for advice about contraception and about a quarter for advice about sexually transmitted disease. Boys prefer their dads. Shouldn't the percentage be higher than 40%? What does it say about the silence around the kitchen table? No wonder 45% of sexually active school students do not use condoms consistently and a third use only condoms. Perhaps we should be grateful the abortion rate is not higher.

How much better to have had a discussion about the pill. Mind you, teenagers tell me actually getting a prescription for the pill, unless your doctor bulk bills, is almost impossible without parental support and many would prefer to gamble with condoms or distract themselves with other forms of sex.

The danger of parents not providing sex education or access to reliable contraception and the withdrawal of abortion rights is that we will have more unwanted children and teenage pregnancies in particular. It does not seem right to saddle young women and perhaps their children, with the consequences of reckless youth in such a permanent way. It punishes women for their sexuality; to a far lesser extent it punishes their male partners who can now be identified with DNA.

Safe and reliable contraception and honest sex education would go a long way to reducing the abortion rate.

Last updated 25 November 2004.