Thursday, April 9, 2009

Sex Ed.

My best friend and I have been friends since we were seven years old. We did everything together. i said did everything together because now our time is limited and sometimes she doesnt feel well enough to do certain things. She developed a lot faster than most girls at our age. this caused a lot of male attention. Not only male attention but older male attention. At the age of 15 she got a boyfriend. he was an 18 year old senior. He always had a reputation for sleeping around but when he met her he was a one women man. When she turned 16 she lost her virginity to this boy. Of course she did not think it was a big deal that he was not a virgin because she loved him and she new that she meant more to him than any other girl ever did. A year later she was having problems, she was sick all the time. she was also always tired and never felt like doing anything. I felt like i was losing my best friend and i was actually a little upset with her. She went to the doctor to find out what was causing her fatigue. The results came back one month later totally unexpected, she was diagnosed with HIV. When i found outi went to her house and held her as we both cried for hours. i felt like my friend was getting ripped away from me to soon. This changed both our lives and plans for the future. We were suppose to be room mates in college, be neighbors when we got our own houses, have kids at the same time so they can be best friends too, and finally coctail parties in the Bahamas when we are old and grey. Most of this will never happen because she did not go to college, has choosen not to have kids, and she might not live long enough to get to the Bahamas. She never used a condom with her boyfriend because she was on birth control, she did not see the use. Condoms are 90% effective in protecting against HIV/AIDS. We were never made aware of this. we were only taught that if someone has sex before they are married they will most likely contract an STD. We thought the message was silly and it was just adults trying to scare us out of the fun in life once again. They never once were realistic and told us about our other options. That is because we had an abstinence based program. Teenagers in America have the highest STD rate out of all Industrial countries. This is exactly why we need to provide to our young people information on safer sex. More than half of teenagers have pre-material sex before they graduate high school. That is more than the majority. They need to be taught safer sex for their health and others health as well. Abstinence is a good thought but it is unrealistic to think that it will make every teenager choose to abstain from sex untill marraige. Schools need to give kids more options. They need to teach safer sex in sex education so America's future can be healthy.