Andreina Cordova, a 15 year-old Central American Paramount resident is defying abstinence only sex ed to counsel peers about the realities of sex in today’s society. She’s been attending Planned Parenthood sex education events since the age of 13. She had just finished eighth grade when she became one of the youngest students ever hired to be a peer advocate in a program whose goal is to reduce teen pregnancy and STD rates.
She has memorized pages and pages of information on sex education and sexually transmitted diseases. She’s ready to pass out cards from Planned Parenthood, listing services and clinics. She is also armed with condoms.
This makes you wonder about the failure of contemporary sexual educatioin programs to proactively inform students of safe sex methods, emotional preparedness, and disease and infections that are attributed to intimacy. Instead of keeping it real, accurate, and poignant, the Bush administration and many a conservative politicians throughout this state have bypassed safe sex methodology in favor of abstinence only ploys. Where has that brought us?
More than 360,000 adolescents contract a sexually transmitted disease each year in Los Angeles County. In 2005, the most recent year for which data is available, 5,113 L.A. County girls younger than 18 gave birth — 3.4% of all births that year.
To circumscribe these rates, Audreina goes to the heart of the epidemic, South LA, with condoms and accurate information in hand. Now why can’t education officials and state politicans listen to what is at stake and pass proactive legislation like Mark Leno’s Assembly Bill 1511, instead of holding it in suspense?
