Spending the Semester at Planned Parenthood

I first became interested in sex education advocacy when I was in eighth grade and attended a ‘Condom Jewelry and Sex Education’ workshop at a conference for Unitarian Universalist youth I was attending. The workshop was run by two high schoolers and focused on making youth comfortable with condoms and educating them about safe sex, STDs, and GLBTQ issues. Not only was it a lot of fun making necklaces and bracelets out of condoms, including flavored ones, glitter, and beads, but I really got my first perspective on the reality of sex education in America. At my private middle school we received sex education in 7^th and 8^th grade and even had an outreach educator from Planned Parenthood come in and talk to us, so I wasn’t aware that a huge portion of students received no knowledge about contraceptives or birth control in school. As a teenager the issue was very personal for me. I was one of the ‘impressionable children’ that a huge sector of society was trying to keep from being sexually active by promoting abstinence only education.

By having the perspective a youth, I thought it was naïve to believe that abstinence only education was the most appropriate policy to teach to youth. Of course teenagers were going to have sex and preaching abstinence was not going to prevent it. It seemed obvious to me that youth need to be fully informed about how to protect themselves from STDs and pregnancy, so they can engage safely in sex. I had a lot of questions about why this was such an issue. How can people think that education is a bad thing? Becoming sexually active is a choice that a person has to make for him or herself, so why is the government trying to control a person’s choices by withholding information from them? It made me angry and frustrated to think that people thought teaching youth how to protect themselves was worse than sending them out into a world full of sex without the knowledge to make smart choices.

My frustration with sex education in America continued to grow through the years; then, I started doing something about it. Remembering the impact the Condom Jewelry Art workshop had on me years earlier, in the winter of last year I ran the same workshop at the same conference for youth in 7^th-12^th grade with my own insight and experience. It was amazing how many of the youth in attendance said they didn’t get comprehensive sex education in their own school. In fact, most of them had gotten their sex education at church through the Our Whole Lives (OWL) programming used by Unitarian Universalism and the United Church of Christ.

Now, I am continuing my work advocating comprehensive sex education as an intern at Planned Parenthood. As a senior at CAPA, I have the opportunity this semester to spend three hours a day at an internship instead of taking classes at school. When my mother suggested Planned Parenthood as a possibility, I immediately became excited by the idea. I’ve always supported Planned Parenthood, and even though I found a passion for sex education in the past couple of years, women’s reproductive rights and GLBTQ rights are issues I have also been involved with. It seemed like a great way to be involved with a program I support and issues I care deeply about while learning about working in a nonprofit.

Working in the public affairs department gives me insight into a facet of the internal operation of an organization like Planned Parenthood. I remember at Pride Fest this summer visiting the Planned Parenthood and seeing the little packs filled with a condom, lube and cards. At that point, I didn’t think about all the work that went into filling hundreds of those little packs, but now I certainly do since I’m one of the people putting them together. I also get to work on the blog, a refreshing writing experience, requiring a different tone and style than I’m used to, and am doing campaigning, helping to make sexual education in Pennsylvania actually happen. I still ask the same questions I did four years ago, and they continue to give me the drive to try and create change. I chose to do an internship at Planned Parenthood because I believe in what the organization is trying to do, and I want to be a part of it.