This editorial was published by the Post Register of Idaho Falls.
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Idaho teachers insist that students do their homework. Idaho Falls voters should insist that Rep. Barbara Ehardt do hers.
Ehardt recently introduced legislation that would overhaul Idaho’s sex education system. But it’s quite clear that she doesn’t understand that system, and, what’s worse, that she didn’t make an effort to understand it.
In an interview — which often descended into the utterly bizarre — a week before she introduced the bill, Ehardt paraded a copy of a graphic handout with illustrations of a man engaged in masturbation in his bedroom and bathroom. Schools are teaching Idaho students to masturbate, she asserted.
“We’re sexualizing our kids,” she said.
If Ehardt had taken the simple step of talking to the school district, she would have learned that the handout was prepared for only a handful of students with developmental disabilities who had begun masturbating in the classroom. Some of them are nonverbal, so pictures were needed to teach the lesson that such behavior isn’t proper in public. The flyer was only sent to their parents, who said they didn’t want it to be shown to their children. So it was never seen by a single student — until Ehardt caused it to be shown to several thousand YouTube viewers.
It was not, as she claimed, an effort to encourage kids to masturbate. Ehardt could have easily learned this by calling the school district, as our reporters quickly did.
At the hearing to introduce the bill, lawmakers asked her who she had consulted with when preparing it. Only certain parents, she replied, because their input is “most important to me.” That may be what’s most important to Ehardt, but failing to understand the facts of the situation is inexcusable. It’s an insult to Idaho educators.
That’s not the only bit of homework Ehardt failed to do.
In the interview, Ehardt spun quite the theory about Idaho’s sex education curriculum.
“They require the students in the class to go out and find these clinics,” she claimed. “Well, what clinics are they referencing? Well, these clinics most often are going to be Planned Parenthood clinics. ... Now, these clinics are setting themselves up for when the child actually does become pregnant because of all this essentially suggested sexual activity. When they become pregnant, where are they going to go? They’re going to go to these clinics, and these clinics are setting themselves up in a self-perpetuating way for the child to come back, and this is where they will receive their abortion.”
The interviewer then asserted that this was a “profiteering” scheme by Planned Parenthood, which has only three clinics in Idaho, none in eastern Idaho.
“Exactly,” Ehardt replied.
Idaho, one of the most conservative states in the nation, designed its sex education curriculum to get kids pregnant so Planned Parenthood could profit? That is as bizarre and baseless a conspiracy theory as you can find anywhere, and it is unbecoming of someone trusted to write this state’s laws.
If Ehardt had taken the time to do her homework, she would have discovered other facts that may have unsettled her view on the issue of sex education — most notably Idaho’s plummeting teen pregnancy rate.
Here’s what we found in an hour through publicly available Department of Health and Welfare reports.
Fact: In 2012, 34 of every 1,000 Idaho teen girls became pregnant. By 2016, it was down to 24 of every 1,000 — a staggering 29 percent decline in just four years.
Fact: Between 1 in 6 and 1 in 7 teen pregnancies in Idaho result in abortions. Even as the teen pregnancy rate has plummeted, that rate has remained constant.
Fact: The dropping teen pregnancy rate has reduced the number of teen abortions. Between 2014 and 2016, the number of teen pregnancies dropped from 1,514 to 1,401. That decline reduced the number of teen abortions by 28 in just two years.
Conclusion: If teens aren’t educated in methods of avoiding pregnancy, it’s quite easy to see that the teen pregnancy rate will begin rising. Any reversal in the declining teen pregnancy rate is likely to reverse the decline in abortions.
We are quite sure increasing the number of teen abortions is not the intended effect of Ehardt’s bill, but it is an eminently predictable one.
It doesn’t take long to do this kind of homework. Ehardt should have done it herself before introducing legislation overhauling Idaho’s sex education system. As any teacher will tell you, if you don’t do your homework, you’ll fail.
