The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SEICUS) would like you to get REAL about sex education.

SEICUS has declared October “Sex Ed Month of Action,” and the organization is encouraging young people to raise awareness for the need for comprehensive sex ed — and specifically the Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act [pdf].

Introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the legislation (S.611, HR.1551) calls for a dedicated federal funding stream ($50 million) that would cover state grants for developing comprehensive sexuality education programs. A petition in support of the REAL Act is online at AmplifyYourVoice.org.

Reviewing these quick facts about the need for comprehensive sex education, I was reminded of my own “real” sex education.

Picture this: It’s Sunday morning, and I’m competing in a condom-stretching contest in the basement of a pre-school. Other kids are trying to blow up the largest condom-balloon, shoot a condom the farthest (rubber-band style), or beat my record of 24-inches for the condom-stretch (all the way from the floor to my hip). Four adults are recording scores and announcing winners. In the center of the room, next to a few condom-clad bananas, sits a box of donuts, a subtle bribe to get us out of bed so early on a weekend.

I was in eighth grade, and I was a reluctant student in Our Whole Lives.

Our Whole Lives (OWL), a sexuality education curriculum developed jointly by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ, was first published in 1999, and subsequently updated in 2005. The class provides a comprehensive, interactive, unabashed look at sexuality, offering six sets of curricula for age groups spanning kindergarten to adulthood.

The “big curriculum” for seventh-to-ninth graders is predominantly offered outside of schools (I took OWL as part of Sunday school at my local UU church), and tends to take a more personal angle than classroom based sex-ed classes, offering time for discussion, games and unlimited questions.

The first sessions of the curriculum focus on building rapport between the instructors and the students, as well as creating a high level of comfort between the students themselves. One of my OWL classmates recently said: “Because of the intimate environment of OWL, it felt really awkward at times, but in the end was really effective in achieving its purpose… There was room for open discussion, and questions arose that never would have when surrounded by 22 random kids from school.”

This “intimate environment,” as well as the fact that, by virtue of being taught outside of the school system, OWL does not need to conform to any state or federally-imposed limitations, means that OWL can address sexuality education more broadly. Topics include everything from anatomy and physiology (I clearly remember being ejaculated on by a working model of a penis built by a class-mate), to gender roles in dating (we had a long argument about who should pay for dinner and a movie).

There was a whole session devoted to “love making,” and another devoted to masturbation. Trading colored m&ms taught us about the terrifying ease of spreading sexually transmitted diseases. We played with condoms, diaphragms, female condoms and spermicidal gels. We discussed our feelings about abortion at length. We spent three weeks discussing sexual orientation and gender identity. At an all-class sleepover, as part of our unit on responsible sexual behavior, we watched “American Pie.”

When I took OWL at age 14, issues like herpes, emergency contraception and “responsible sexual decisions” often seemed remote to the point of irrelevance, and I can’t deny that my high school health class served as somewhat of a necessary refresher. However, what I really absorbed from OWL at the time, and what I have carried with me ever since, is an outlook on sexuality that was strikingly absent from my sex-ed unit in health class: OWL taught me that sexuality is not something to be ashamed of, to be hidden or feared. It is something to be questioned and explored, respected and protected. It is nuanced and complex, and sometimes infuriatingly confusing.

Most of all, it is an essential part of the human experience that last from birth until death – Our Whole Lives.

So, am I bitter that I had to be up by 9 a.m. every Sunday for a year? Yes. I’m I glad my parent made me do it? Absolutely.

Meg Young recently graduated from high school in Middlebury, Vt., and will enroll at Tufts University in the fall of 2010 after taking a gap year.

Compiled by Anna Clark, who blogs at Isak, these texts cover not only the basics, but the complex policies and politics surrounding birth control, gender, race, abortion, adoption and more. From the introduction:

If we can agree that few teens learn about sexuality in an accurate, age-appropriate, and comprehensive way, then where does that leave adults who came through the same school systems they did? Many of us are still full of questions that we aren’t quite sure how to articulate. Few can claim that they’ve figured sex — and its social influence — out.

If you want to graduate to the next level of sexual health, pleasure, and social awareness, now’s your chance. Get yourself schooled with a crash course in sex ed for adults. From orgasms to organs, from contraceptives to court decisions, look to the reading list below for the can’t-miss books and articles about sex.

There are a number of titles here that I’ve been meaning to read, including such recent releases as “The Girl Who Went Away: Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade,” by Ann Fessler, and “The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World,” by Michelle Goldberg. Any books on the list that you’d highly recommend, or other titles you would add?

The health care reform debate hasn’t been encouraging for reproductive health advocates, but on Wednesday the Senate Finance Committee pushed back against a Republican amendment designed to “doubly triply restrict abortion coverage in the bill,” as Rachel Maddow described it last night.

Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine joined almost all of the Democrats to defeat the amendment 13-10. Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a Democrat, voted for the restrictions along with the rest of the Republicans. Robert Pear of The New York Times explains the framework of the amendment:

The bill, written by the chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, says that no tax credits could be used to pay for abortions except as allowed in the latest appropriations for the Department of Health and Human Services — in case of rape or incest or if the life of a pregnant woman was in danger.

Under the bill, some health plans would cover abortion, and some would not. Private insurers that chose to cover abortion would be required to segregate money, taken from private premiums, to cover the procedure.

The amendment, offered Wednesday by Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, would have gone much further. It said that no money provided under the legislation could be used to pay “any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion,” with a few limited exceptions. Under the proposal, insurers could have offered “a separate supplemental policy” to cover abortions. Such policies would have been financed “solely by supplemental premiums paid by individuals choosing to purchase the policy.”

Once again, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who demonstrated last week during a debate about pregnancy coverage that she is a no-nonsense force to be reckoned with, fired back against treating women as second-class citizens. She argued that the amendment goes far beyond existing law, which already prohibits spending federal dollars to pay for abortions for women on Medicaid, and it would restrict access to abortion for all women. Here’s my transcript of the video above:

In fact, with all respect to my friend, as a woman, I find it offensive that in [this amendment], any woman, any family purchasing through the exchange — if they did not receive any tax credit — would be prohibited from having the full range of health care options that they may need covered. This doesn’t just refer to the tax credits. As I read this: “prohibit private insurers operating through the exchange from offering coverage” — this is an unprecedented restriction on people who paid for their own health care insurance.

Then, when we look at the fact that this offers, that people could have a supplemental single-service rider, the assumption that somehow a woman or family would say, “You know, some day we may have an unintended pregnancy, so we’re going to get a separate rider. Or maybe my pregnancy is going to have a crisis — many, many crises — and so we’re going to try to find some other rider.”

In my judgment, I don’t even know how that would work. In the few states that have tried to do that, there’s no evidence that even those kinds of riders are available.

It’s remarkable that discussions about abortion conveniently leave out that it is a legal, medical procedure. Or that one in three women will have had an abortion by age 45. Or that three-fourths of women who obtain an abortion say they cannot afford to have a child. Or — as we saw in the weeks after the murder of Dr. George Tiller, when women stepped forward to reveal their stories — the decision is sometimes heartbreakingly, medically necessary.

We’re not the only ones frustrated by the way abortion has turned into a wedge issue for health care reform.

“In a rational system of medical care, there would be virtually no restrictions on financing abortions,” reads an editorial published in today’s New York Times. ”But abortion is not a rational issue, and opponents have succeeded in broadly denying the use of federal dollars to pay for them, except in the case of pregnancies that result from rape or incest or that endanger a woman’s life.”

“There should be no restrictions on abortion coverage in the exchanges,” the editorial concludes. “Health care reformers should not retreat on this issue, but we recognize that principle is often sacrificed in Congressional bargaining. Democrats who support the compromise must find a way to prevent it from being used later to go after other tax subsidies and thus further deny Americans’ rights to make their own health-care decisions.”

Hatch put forth a second amendment to strengthen existing “conscience clause” laws protecting healthcare workers from performing abortions or other services to which they have moral or ethical objections. It also failed on the same on the same 10-13 margin; Snowe voted with the Democrats, and Conrad with the Republicans.

Funding for Abstinence Only Education

On Tuesday night, the committee approved a comprehensive sex education funding stream, the Personal Responsibility Education for Adulthood Training. That amendment, proposed by Baucus, provides $75 million for states, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), “$50 million of which would be geared to evidence-based, medically accurate, age-appropriate programs to educate adolescents about both abstinence and contraception in order to prevent unintended teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. The remaining funds would be for innovative programs as well as research and evaluation.”

Snowe joined all Democrats in passing the amendment; the vote was 14–9.

Yet on the same night, the committee voted for an amendment introduced by Hatch to restore federal funding for abstinence-only education — “better known,” said Maddow, “as the best teen pregnancy and STD delivery system politicians have ever devised.”

Democrats Conrad and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas joined all 10 Republicans on the Finance Committee to vote in favor of adding $50 million-a-year funding for the Title V abstinence-only program to the health care bill, despite the fact that President Obama’s 2010 budget eliminated funding for abstinence-only education programs — because they simply don’t work.

Even Texas got the message. The state that ranks first in spending on sexual abstinence has the third-highest teen birth rate in the country and the highest percentage of teen mothers giving birth more than once. As the Austin American-Statesman reported on Sunday, some school districts are giving up the abstinence-only model and adopting a more comprehensive sex education curriculum, also called “abstinence-plus.”

Both amendments still have to pass the full House and Senate, so it’s anyone guess where the dollars will fall, but SEICUS is optimistic that legislators will wake up and reject the abstinence-only funding.

“This amendment takes a giant step backward by restoring funding for the failed and discredited abstinence-only-until-marriage program for the states,” said William Smith, vice president for public policy at SEICUS. “However, because this program so clearly doesn’t work and half the states don’t even participate, we are confident it will be stripped from the final bill and ask Congressional leaders and the White House to ensure this happens.”

I watched some of episode one; Maci, the mom shown here with her boyfriend, Ryan, and their son, Bentley, is amazing. She basically gives up everything to take on this new responsibility, with little help from Ryan. I was a bit surprised, though, to read her update describing her life now in far more upbeat terms. I’m thrilled for her, of course, but I do wonder if some teenage viewers will be conflicted.

Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik highly recommends the series and praises the realism: “Parents who don’t go out of their way to see or record this six-week series of profiles of pregnant teenagers are making a big mistake. If you have no other involvement in your kids’ media lives, make them see this.”

Plus: When it comes to sex-ed, who’s the voice of reason?

Her conclusion:

As a pediatrician with two sons and a daughter, I acknowledge the need to emphasize manners and respect as boys maneuver into adolescence and adulthood, and to help them understand the implications and obligations of their increasing size and strength. And I acknowledge that for their own protection, boys need to understand that there are people — male and female — who will see them as potential predators, and judge them automatically at fault in any ambiguous situation.

But I am enough of an old-fashioned feminist to want to teach daughters the same fundamental lessons I teach sons: err on the side of respect and good manners; understand that confusion, doubt and ambiguity abound, especially when you are young; never take advantage of someone else’s uncertainty; and, just as important, remember that adolescence should be a time of fun, affection, growth and discovery.

It’s too bad that one side of teaching our children about sex and relationships means reminding them that there are bad people in the world; stay away from them, stay safe, speak up if someone hurts you or pushes you. But everyone needs that information, and that promise of adult support. We have to get that message across without defining some of our children as obvious perpetrators and others as obvious victims, because that insults everyone.

Time, Again, to Get REAL: Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) this week introduced a bill called the Responsible Education about Life (REAL) Act that would authorize funding  for comprehensive and medically accurate sex education. Believe it or not, federal funding is only available now for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. And we know how well that’s been working.

Spending Strategy Advisers Named: The U.S. Health and Human Services Department on Thursday named a panel of 15 government experts to advise the government on how to spend the $1.1 billion on determining which medical treatments work best. The money was set aside in the stimulus bill.  Rachel has more on comparative effectiveness research, a new focus of the Obama administration.

Plus: HHS announced Dr. David Blumenthal, a former Harvard Medical School professor and political adviser on health care issues, as the  national coordinator for health information technology. In this new role, Blumenthal “will lead the implementation of a nationwide interoperable, privacy-protected health information technology infrastructure as called for in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” according to the release.

A Reason to Fast Track Coverage: “Health care is one of the few relatively healthy parts of our unhealthy economy right now,” writes Drew Altman, Kaiser Family Foundation president and CEO.

“Since January 2008, the economy has lost 4.3 million non-farm jobs. Virtually all major industries have shed jobs. What went up? Well, mining and logging companies added modestly to their payrolls. Government and education employment is up somewhat, along with social assistance (not too surprising given our economic circumstances). But where did employment go up the most since January of last year? You guessed it: Health care, which added 383,200 jobs.” Read on.

Small Business Takes on Reform: The National Small Business Association today launched a new website, Health Reform Today, advocating for a federally defined benefits package, subsidies for low-income individuals and tax incentives.

White House Forum in Iowa: The third Regional White House Forum on Health Reform takes place today in Des Moines, Iowa. Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office on Health Reform, will represent the administration. The Des Moines Register website will carry the event live at 10 a.m.

Skimping on Care: More than a third of people surveyed have skipped medical check-ups or dental visits over the past year due to concern over health care costs, and 27 percent have put off getting needed health care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s first health care tracking poll of 2009.

Supreme Court: No Legal Shield in Drug Labeling: The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that people injured by drugs can sue the drug manufacturer in state courts, even if the drugs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

“The ruling could have significant implications beyond drug manufacturing,” writes Adam Liptak at The New York Times. “Many companies have sought tighter federal regulation in recent years in part to shield themselves from litigation.”

The case involved a Vermont woman, a musician, whose arm had to be amputated following an injection of the anti-nausea drug Phenergan. Levine sued the drug maker Wyeth because Wyeth had not changed the label indicating that one method of administering the drug had a small risk of error which caused irreversible gangrene. Nina Totenberg did a good report on the ruling. The NPR link also includes excerpts from the oral arguments heard last November.

Sunshine State Keeps Teens in the Dark: The Healthy Teens Campaign of Florida and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) have released a report on failed abstinence-only sex education programs in Florida’s public schools: “Sex Education in the Sunshine State: How Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Are Keeping Florida’s Youth in the Dark” (pdf).

“[O]ur research has exposed both the state’s appalling indicators of poor outcomes for young people and the equally appalling nature of how abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have become pervasive throughout the state,” writes Adrienne Kimmell at RH Reality Check.

Him/Her/They: Elizabeth Landau at CNN reports on the history of the search for gender-neutral pronouns, an issue that has recently been taken up on Twitter. An interesting story.

On the Issues: Good reads in the On the Issues Magazine cafe, including Diana Whitten’s look at Women on Waves, a Dutch organization that provides on-ship abortions in international waters for women from countries where it is illegal. Women on Waves recently won an important victory in the European Court of Human Rights. And don’t forget to check out the winter issue, which features stories on topics from ratifying CEDAW to Second Life.

Moving Reproductive Services Off-Site (Six Feet Away): From Women’s eNews: For more than a decade, a hospital merger in New York state was held up by abortion politics. Last week, community activists gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking their hard-fought compromise. Rebecca Harshbarger reports.

Plus: Emily Douglas points to this Albany Times Union op-ed on the implications of a possible merger between two secular hospitals and one religious hospital in Rensselaer County, New York. The merger raises questions about reproductive health care for patients and employee health insurance benefits, since Catholic directives prohibit coverage for contraception.

In Translation: Over at Sociological Images, a blog sponsored by the American Sociological Association, there’s been some debate over the English and Spanish versions of a pamphlet for pregnant women offered by Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser provides a response.

The Economic Future and Women’s Roles: The Chicago Foundation for Women looks at how the stimulus package affects women’s economic security.

Teaching Domestic Violence Victims Safe Use of Technology: Via this press release, I learned about a Washington state program designed to help victims of domestic violence by increasing their knowledge of how to use technology safely.

“Domestic violence is built around control, not anger, and an abusive partner often limits a woman’s access to information and support. Monitoring computer activity is one of many ways to control a spouse,” said Jerry Finn, a University of Washington Tacoma professor of social work who also evaluates the effectiveness of human services programs.

The training covers how to prevent such things as identity theft; concealing browser history; how to be safe in a chat room; how to set up an e-mail account without using a real name; and how to prevent being followed with a GPS device. What a smart idea.

Welcome Particle, Wave, Astarte and …: To apologize for the late Double Dose, I offer some cute overload, via feminist poet and performance artist Diana Tigerlily, who also raises goats.

Meet the newest ones — five in all, if my counting is correct. Makes me think two dogs and two cats may not be enough : )

With his economic recovery plan signed into law, Mr. Obama plans to turn his attention more to health care next week with a fiscal blueprint that will begin to advance his ideas about covering the uninsured, advisers said. He may also make health care a theme of his prime-time address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, they said.

It remained unclear whether the White House would finish vetting Ms. Sebelius in time to nominate her by next week. Advisers described her as “the leading candidate,” although they said other names were still in discussion and emphasized that no final decision had been made.

We previously noted Sebelius’ frontrunner status, along with other names reportedly under discussion. The Washington Post’s Al Kamen this week mentioned another would-be contender: “Obama transition chief John D. Podesta, whose name has been out there as perhaps most ready to handle the difficult job, has told co-workers and friends that he’s staying put at his think tank, the Center for American Progress. But he’s been observing that perhaps Bill Novelli, the outgoing head of AARP, the seniors lobby, might be a possible candidate.”

The More Things Change …: In that same column, Kamen notes that Obama’s first 56 selections for Senate-confirmed jobs reflect, well, the status quo — white men still rule, though they’re not quite the majority. At this early stage, 32 percent of the appointees are women.

By way of comparison on a few of these statistics, 39 of Bill Clinton’s first 48 nominees (81 percent) were white and seven (15 percent) were African American; 75 percent were men. Of George W. Bush’s 28 first nominees, 22 were white (79 percent) and only 14 percent were women, according to data compiled by the Presidential Transition Project at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service.

It should be noted that this snapshot is of the Cabinet and topmost officials in the new administration and may change significantly over time. For example, the average age could be expected to drop a bit as lower-level positions — assistant secretaries and such — get filled, probably with a younger cohort of appointees.

Obama Signs Stimulus Bill: President Obama on Tuesday signed into law the $787-billion economic stimulus bill. Ann at Feministing looks at who’s getting stimulated — or, to be more specific, how will the law expand job opportunities for women?

Over at The New York Times, Robert Pear reports that the bill provides “substantial amounts of money for the federal government to compare the effectiveness of different treatments for the same illness.”

Under the legislation, researchers will receive $1.1 billion to compare drugs, medical devices, surgery and other ways of treating specific conditions. The bill creates a council of up to 15 federal employees to coordinate the research and to advise President Obama and Congress on how to spend the money.

The program responds to a growing concern that doctors have little or no solid evidence of the value of many treatments. Supporters of the research hope it will eventually save money by discouraging the use of costly, ineffective treatments.

Meanwhile, NPR reports on a new study that shows even head-to-head comparisons don’t provide easy answers.

Scientists Await Action on Stem Cells: Sure the economy has demanded a lot of attention, but some scientists are wondering when Obama is going to lift restrictions on stem cell research.

“Everyone is waiting with bated breath,” George Daley, a leading stem cell scientist at Children’s Hospital in Boston. tells the Washington Post. “We’re all waiting to breathe a huge sigh of relief.”

Know How to Fix Health Care?: If you have a plan — and if you’re an undergraduate or graduate student — Kaiser Family Foundation wants to hear from you. Below is your essay assignment — and unlike the last paper you wrote, this one could net you $1,000:

President Obama has stated that reforming the health care system is one of his top priorities, and there is broad interest from policymakers and the public in making a change. During the campaign, he outlined a framework for reforming health care. The essay should cover: what elements of his plan should be prioritized given the current economic crisis, what elements are most likely to garner support and which ones will be most challenging and why?

Action Alert
* Ask Obama to End Abstinence-Only Funding
President Obama is putting together his proposed budget for 2010, and as he has assured the nation, he will be on the lookout for failed programs that deserve to be eliminated. We have an easy cut to suggest: End federal funding for the failed abstinence-only-until-marriage experiment.
Email the White House (Chicago Foundation for Women)

But we can do something to help ensure today’s teens have access to this information — and more — at no cost.

A donor to Scarleteen has agreed to match donations made through March 15. And now that Scarleteen is affiliated with the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco, it has nonprofit 501c(3) status, which means donations are tax-deductible. Read all about it here and make a donation.

Heather Corrina launched Scarleteen back in 1998. It currently has about 20 active volunteers and is one of the top-ranked sites for young adult sexuality education. Despite its popularity, Scarleteen averages just one donation per every 500,000 users. That’s because most of the website’s visitors either do not have their own income or do not have access or permission to use credit cards or checks to make donations. So it’s up to us older folks to step up.

With more funding, writes Corrina, Scarleteen could do so much more:

Creating and distributing outreach print materials for schools, clinics and community groups, based on content like our popular Sex Readiness Checklist, our anatomy articles, and our pieces on abuse, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Providing our volunteer staff extra training. In the next year, we’d like to get a few of our staff trained or certified in either or both pregnancy options counseling and/or basic sex education.

Stipends for some of our volunteer writers and columnists, which will both sustain a quality of content and allow us to keep up with the frequency of updates we have had in the last year. Paying writers also can nurture a greater diversity of voice and content.

Maintaining a part-time freelance developer to help us best manage and maintain the site for optimum useability.

A part-time, in-person assistant for myself as director.

Plus: There is a way for young people to make a difference through Scarleteen’s new campaign, Do You Give a Buck About Sex Education? Yep. Just a buck or two, sent by mail, would be most appreciated.

Either way you can help out, this is a sex education campaign that we happily support.

“The survey of 1,000 Republican and Independent voters conducted by Public Strategies, Inc. found that Republicans, and to an even greater degree Independents, support a range of legislative proposals to make contraception more affordable and accessible,” according to the release. Among the findings:

• Nearly three-quarters (72%) of Republicans and Independents favor legislation that would make it easier for people at all income levels to obtain contraception, and 70 percent favor legislation that would help make birth control more affordable. More than 60 percent of fundamentalist/evangelical Protestants favor these proposals.
• Only 2 percent of Republicans and Independents would like to see government restrict access to contraception. A majority (64%) would like to see government provide more information about contraception, and 33 percent would prefer that the government play no role.
• A strong majority of Independents (67%) and nearly half of Republicans (49%) have a favorable opinion of emergency contraception.

View more of the survey concerning attitudes toward sex education, pharmacy refusals and abortion.

I haven’t seen the questions, but I was a bit surprised to read that “only 8 percent of Republicans and Independents think the government should support abstinence-only education.” The percentage of Independents and Republicans who support comprehensive sex education programs was a less enthusiastic 76 percent and 62 percent, respectively, but those numbers are still higher than I would have guessed.

Plus: Abstinence-only education programs were funded to the tune of $175 million per year under the Bush administration. Has its golden age come to end? The Economist ponders the fate of abstinence-only education under a new administration and Congress.