By:Megan Henry
Ohio, one of a handful of states without comprehensive sex education taught in schools, has a higher teen birth rate than the national average.
The national birth rate for females 15-19 years old was 13.1 per 1,000 females and Ohio’s teen birth rate is 14.6 per 1,000 females in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than half (61%) of Ohio’s chlamydia cases in 2023 were people between the ages of 15-24, according to the Ohio Department of Health. Ohio’s syphilis rate (16.3 per 100,000) was higher than the national average (15.8 per 100,000) in 2023, according to the CDC.
“What we’ve seen is states that have no sex ed or poor sex ed policies, they typically fare worse on health indicators such as (sexually transmitted infections) rates, teen birth rates, having lower contraceptive knowledge, and other existing health disparities,” said Nawal Umar, senior policy analyst for Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
“These states are also putting their young people at higher risk for sexual violence victimization and having poor mental health outcomes because sex education provides really critical instruction, consent and communication and healthy relationships and so much more,” Umar said.
Ohio’s curriculum stresses abstinence as a general policy and requires some instruction about sexually transmitted infections, according to the Ohio Revised Code.
Schools are required to “emphasize adoption as an option to unintended pregnancies” and “teach the potential physical, psychological, emotional, and social side effects” of sex outside of marriage, according to Ohio’s law.
Because Ohio lacks comprehensive sex education, it’s ultimately up to each school district on how they decide to teach it.
“When there’s not a sex education policy in place at the state level, one of the major consequences of that is that teens across the state can have very diverse experiences when it comes to the kind of instruction they’re receiving about their bodies because there’s a lack of uniform policy,” Umar said.
The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce is required to conduct an annual audit to ensure school districts are in compliance with the state’s law.
Every district completed the 2023-24 audit and all but three school districts were found to be overall compliant. Jefferson Township Local School District (Montgomery County), Ridgewood Local School District (Coshocton County), and Washington Local Schools (Lucas County) were non-compliant.
In explaining why it didn’t meet the standards, Ridgewood told the state “many family structures exist today, and all can provide children with a loving and supportive environment.”
“We have school staff and students who come from single-parent households, same-sex couples, and traditional married couple families alike,” the district said. “This highlights the importance of recognizing and respecting all family types. Furthermore, sex education should never be used to shame students for their family background.”
Jefferson Township’s district said it only have 255 students and was unable to find someone to teach sex ed, according to ODEW’s audit.
“We do not teach children that if they were born out of wedlock there are harmful consequences for society,” Washington Local Schools wrote in their explanation. “All children have opportunities and are valued by our school district.”
Ohio is the only state without its own state health education content standards. Ohio lawmakers decide curriculum requirements, so the State Board of Education can not require health education standards.
“It’s maddening that the State of Ohio has refused to implement this after decades of experts, educators, even religious communities, asking for this curriculum to be delivered in public schools because, unfortunately, some students don’t have families who are able to provide them with this information,” said Abortion Forward Executive Director Kellie Copeland.
Comprehensive sex ed is medically accurate, age-appropriate information that teaches about sexual health, healthy relationships, and consent, said Jenna Wojdacz, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio’s senior director of strategy and community engagement.
“Access to accurate sexual health information should not be political,” Wojdacz said. “It’s certainly what our young Ohio students need.”
The Ohio Center for Sex Education is the education arm of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio that teaches comprehensive sex education in schools and community organizations.
The center currently teaches in six school districts — Cleveland Metropolitan School District (Cuyahoga County), Akron Public Schools (Summit County), Lakewood City Schools (Cuyahoga County), Berea Schools (Cuyahoga County), Shaker Heights Schools (Cuyahoga County), and Columbus City Schools (Franklin County).
A 2021 report from the Journal of Adolescent Health reviewed three decades of research and determined there is strong support for comprehensive sex education.
“When we don’t have comprehensive sex education, we know that learners are getting misinformation that is basically values laden by somebody else’s propaganda agenda,” Wojdacz said.
Benefits of teaching comprehensive sex ed include reduced teenage birth rates, reduced STI rates, increased contraceptive usage, and delayed sexual activity, according to Umar.
Students who received comprehensive sex education were less likely to have a teen pregnancy than those who received either no sex ed or abstinence-only programs, according to a 2008 report in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Advocates spoke out against having abstinence-only as a general policy.
“It’s ineffective,” Umar said. “It also tends to be pretty heteronormative.”
“A lot of the abstinence-only curriculum teaches this purity idea that if something sexually happens to you, then you’re not pure,” Copeland said. “That is so damaging to the psyche of people who have either become sexually active because they wanted to or because they didn’t want to.”
Ultimately, Copeland said, teaching abstinence-only as a general policy does not work.
“It leaves (students) without vital information for when they do become sexually active later in their lives,” she said. “It’s really important for people to understand how their bodies work, how pregnancy works, and how sexually transmitted infections work.”
Receiving comprehensive sex education does not encourage students to engage in sexual activity, Wojdacz said.
“In no way does our curriculum promote giving it a try or encouraging people to engage in any activities,” she said. “There’s no prescriptive aspect to comprehensive sex ed. … It’s reductive to suggest that accurate information is going to suddenly trigger a bunch of destructive behavior in people or a bunch of ill-advised behavior.”
Ohio is one of 13 states that received an “F” on SIECUS’s state profiles on sex education policy. Washington, Oregon, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island all received an “A.”
Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring sex education, according to SIECUS.
Umar urges Ohio lawmakers to push for better sex ed policies.
“There’s so many benefits that could be achieved by improving sex education,” she said.
Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on Bluesky.
