Pregnancy-shaming in sex education

Good news: I'm finally finished with my first Health requirement! Only one more to go!

Bad news: I hate the way they taught the sex ed unit.

There are two extremes in teaching sex ed, and I hate both of them. There's the extreme "abstinence only" education, and there's the extreme "do whatever the eff you want" philosophy. I could go on and on about the issues I have with those extremes, but they both seem to agree on one thing: pregnancy. They both seem to agree that pregnancy is a bad thing; an illness and a punishment.

When educating teenagers, one of the first scare-tactics is pregnancy. First of all, this scare-tactic is ineffective when teaching about types of sexual activity that don't lead to pregnancy. Worse, it teaches teenagers that pregnancy is evil. I'm not saying it's a good idea to try and have a baby as a teenager, but pregnancy isn't a bad thing in itself, nor is it a punishment. This attitude is also extremely damaging because of what it leads to.

Many conservatives are unsympathetic towards unmarried pregnant girls and women in need, telling them that they should "close their legs" if they don't want a baby. But these are the same people who are against abortion, even though, ironically, this attitude is not only sexist, but also degrading to unborn children. Unborn babies are people, not punishments. Ironically, this attitude also leads to more abortions. I mean, if a girl has an abortion, no one needs to know that she had sex. But if a girl decides to keep her baby, people will know that she had sex and they'll call her a slut.

Unfortunately, conservatives aren't the only ones who are guilty of pregnancy-shaming. Liberals may fight against slut-shaming, but they still imply that pregnancy is a punishment. But unlike conservatives, they don't believe girls should be "punished" with pregnancy. For example, when talking about sex education, President Obama said, "I am going to teach [my daughters] first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." What many liberals don't realize is that this attitude is degrading to women. Like I said, if a teenager decides to keep her baby, people will make fun of her because they knew she had sex.

I wish people would realize that pregnancy is a consequence, not a punishment. If more people realized that, it would probably be easier for women to make better decisions for themselves and their babies.