Speech

1. Intro
a. Today, 13,000 teenagers lives will change. 10,000 of them will
be infected with an STD, 2,400 will become pregnant, and 55 will
contract HIV. Those are some pretty scary statistics. And yet the
government is still spending $100 million a year on abstinence only sex
ed programs instead of teaching kids about the emotional aspects of sex
and how to do it safely if they choose to do so. "Just say no" didn't
work for drugs, and it won't work for sex either.

2. Body
a. Some schools have started giving free condoms out to students to
make it more likely that teens will use them. Buying condoms from a
store could be a potentially embarrassing situation, especially if the
student would have to show ID or if the condoms were kept in a glass
case in the store. Either of these situations could discourage students
from buying them, and they would have no other way to obtain one if
their school didn't hand them out, so they probably wouldn't use one at
all. Having condoms at school eliminates this problem.

b. Also, if kids are buying condoms with money out of their own
pocket, they would probably get the least expensive brand, which are
probably cheaply made and would break easily. The condoms that the
school would give out would be free and of a higher quality.

c. Some people think giving out condoms will tell teens it's okay
to be sexually active and give them an excuse to have sex. That's a
ridiculous argument. The nurse provides band-aids, and kids aren't just
going to go cut themselves.

d. But to get a condom at most schools that hand them out, you need
a parent to sign a permission slip, and many parents refuse to sign. So
when kids are trying to be responsible and use a condom, adults make it
even harder, and these parents that refuse to sign the form most
definitely would not give kids condoms themselves.

e. Curriculum that effective programs have:
i. Provide basic and accurate information about the risks of teen
sexual activity

ii. Provide examples of refusal skills.
iii. Deliver and consistently reinforce a clear message about either
abstaining from sexual activity of using condoms or other forms of
contraception.

f. Some methods used in sex ed try to scare kids into not being
sexually active by saying stupid things like "If you have sex before
marriage, you should be ready to die" and that's a pretty stupid way of
getting kids not to have sex, it won't work.

g. The U.S. has the highest percentage of teen pregnancies in the
world. Some girls who get pregnant have an abortion, or even try to
make themselves have a miscarriage by throwing themselves down stairs.
40% of teen pregnancies are terminated by abortion. Girls might have an
abortion because they're concerned about how having a baby would change
their lives, they feel they're not mature enough to have a child or
financial problems.

h. Abstinence-only-until-marriage is supposed to work, but current
research findings don't support that it is effective in delaying the
onset of intercourse in teens.

i. Some teens think that since they're in a committed relationship
that they don't have to use condoms , but it was found that teens in a
"committed" relationship had an average of 2.3 sexual partners while
single teens only had an average of 1.8.

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