On Tuesday, April 4, Ohio became the 38th state in the nation to enact Erin’s Law, which is intended to help identify and prevent child sexual abuse, in part through public school education programs.
However, according to Statehouse News Bureau, Ohio has joined four other states – Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, and Alaska – in prohibiting organizations that commit or refer for abortions from providing the sexual abuse prevention education required under Erin’s Law.
The legislation mandates (emphasis added):
In grades kindergarten through six, annual developmentally appropriate instruction in child sexual abuse prevention, including information on available counseling and resources for children who are sexually abused. Such instruction and information provided shall not be connected in any way to any individual, entity, or organization that provides, promotes, counsels, or makes referrals for abortion or abortion-related services.
As Statehouse was quick to point out, this means that one of Ohio’s largest sex education providers, Planned Parenthood, will be excluded from providing this content.
Diego Espino, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio’s VP of community engagement and the director of the Ohio Center for Sex Education, said he believes the new requirements will weaken the quality of the sex education Planned Parenthood provides in Ohio. “Most of our sex ed sessions have some aspect or another that is related to sexual abuse prevention and sexual violence prevention,” he claimed. “When we’re talking about sexually transmitted infections, we always ensure that we cover topics like condom negotiation skills. And that leads us into how to recognize healthy relationships, that then leads us to a possible conversation about sexual abuse and prevention.” He believes Planned Parenthood will now be prohibited from having such conversations.
However, Planned Parenthood has an abysmal track record when it comes to actual prevention and reporting of sexual abuse of minors. As Live Action’s seven-part Aiding Abusers docuseries demonstrated, Planned Parenthood has a history of helping sexual abusers cover their crimes by aborting the children produced as a result, then returning underaged victims to perpetrators for further victimization without reporting the crimes to the proper authorities. Planned Parenthood is required by law to report these crimes.
Furthermore, it has been shown that the “comprehensive sex education” offered by groups such as Planned Parenthood often does more harm than good. As previously reported by Live Action News:
[A review of international comprehensive sex education programs] found “little evidence that [comprehensive sex education] programs are effective at producing positive impact on their participants.” Of 103 total sex education studies, only six had evidence of “real effectiveness” without negative effects after 12 months. Yet even in these six studies, there was no evidence that these six successful studies led to increased consistent condom usage, teen abstinence, fewer instances of sexually transmitted diseases, or fewer teen pregnancies. Meanwhile, 16 studies actually showed negative effects on teen sexual behavior and sexual health, including increases in teen sexual activity and other risky behaviors.
Ohio parents have the ability to opt their children out of public school sex education programs; this opt-out ability will also apply to educational content mandated by Erin’s Law.
