Sure Canada might have a few questionable practices when it comes to young people and sex—the legal age for consent in the country is 16 while the legal age for consensual anal sex is 18—but the US could surely learn a few things about sex education from our neighbors to the north.
Here in the States, teen pregnancy rates are up for the second year in a row. According to recent statistics, American women have 2.09 children while Canadian women have about 1.6. Thirty percent of that difference is apparently due to teen births in the U.S., and a whopping 90 percent of those thirty percent are unwanted.
What is Canada doing so right that we're doing so wrong?
"...The main reason is that Canadian teens of all social classes get
comprehensive information about contraception and about how to avoid
unwanted pregnancies. They get more sex ed in school, and can access
high-school-based family planning counselling though the nurse. They
can also always access universally free medical services, including
visiting family doctor and special health clinics. And at all levels,
there's a more positive attitude towards the pill, and either cheap or
free prescriptions for it.
As a result, young Canadian women use more effective pharmaceutical
methods (i.e. birth control pills) rather than less effective ones
(condoms, or the so-called withdrawal method)...
After a decade and $1.5 billion U.S. federal dollars spent on abstinence-only programs, a Congress-authorized, rigorous scientific study reported no real difference in the age at which program participants first had sex, whether they had sex before marriage, or in their number of sexual partners."
[The Tyee: Canada on Top in Sex Ed]
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