Editorial: US Political Leaders Need More Sex Education

Current news stories in America are doing a great job of showing just how many people are lacking a basic understanding of the female body. Many of these people being those who are running our democracy and shaping our laws.

According to the New York Times, a lawyer in Alabama tried to prove a heavy anti-abortion bill that he took part in drafting, arguing that “after a man and a woman have sex, ‘you can take her straight into a clinic and determine an egg and sperm came together.'”

Unfortunately, for this lawyer, that is not medically possible. The most sensitive pregnancy tests will not come back as a positive until the female’s embryo is implanted into the uterus, typically happening a week or more after fertilization. Therefore, the proposal that any woman would be able to get an abortion within two weeks of fertilization, the cutoff under the Alabama bill, according to the Times, would be “preposterous.”

In more recent times, Ohio passed the “Human Rights Protection Act,” SB 23, also known as the “heartbeat bill,” last week. This bill prohibits the abortion of a fetus once it has a heartbeat, which is typically at five or six weeks. But most women at this stage do not realize they are pregnant because it is too early.

It is common for the average American to learn about the inner workings of pregnancy and female anatomy in their eighth-grade health class. However, it’s reasonable to expect that a political figure trying to legislate what pregnant women can do with their bodies would have a better understanding of the matter.

And although many of our male legislative leaders may have sufficient knowledge on the human body, others can barely grasp the basic knowledge of anatomy. Yet these are the same people allowed to constitute laws that dictate what it is considered “best,” for women’s bodies; what makes matters worse is the President of the United States is one of them.

Last month, President Donald Trump discussed Central American migrants heading to America. During his speech, he made claims that while traveling, young girls are forced to take birth control pills because of the likelihood of sexual assault during their journey.

This alone represents the misguided and misinformation that our political leaders are strewing to the public.

Aside from pregnancy prevention, Planned Parenthood, which Trump has threatened to defund, informs women using birth control pills that it can help in multiple health conditions. This includes reducing or preventing acne, iron deficiency (anemia), cysts in one’s breasts and ovaries, serious uterus infections and more.

As politicians continue to argue over the laws for abortion, they begin to move farther away from the facts and science behind it. If we do not allow people to legally drive without passing a permit test then we should not allow our legislative leaders who are wrongly or under informed to partake in creating bills until they are well knowledge on the subjects. Politicians should hit the books before they head to Capitol Hill.