Missouri House votes to screw up sex ed

The Missouri House approved a bill this week that will change sex ed programs throughout the state–and not in a good way.
The bill requires public school students to get permission slips from their parents before taking sex ed, would ban “abortion providersâ€? from providing any class materials, would state that life begins at conception and would have to push for “lifelong monogamous marriage between a man and a woman.”
Wow. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Cynthia Davis (who says that contraception is “a way to have all the goodies and not pay the price”), who originally wanted to ban a requirement that students be taught about sexually transmitted diseases. Thankfully, that requirement was reinstated.
I don’t know about the parental permission for sex ed thing–when I was in school we had to get a note if our parents wanted us taken out of the class. And while we never really learned about abortion, a lot of great information on birth control and STDs was given to us by local women’s clinics. But I digress–this bill has nothing to do with caring about young people and their health. It’s about limiting our choices and our knowledge. Period.