Two university students are working with a statewide organization to improve sex education by proposing and lobbying for bills in Mississippi legislature.
Mississippi law currently requires school districts to choose between “abstinence-only” and “abstinence-plus” curriculums. Both teach that sex is only appropriate within marriage.
Tyler Yarbrough and Kelly Bates work with Teen Health Mississippi (THMS), which promotes policies that ensure access to sex education for young people, as well as affordable sexual and reproductive health services.
Yarbrough and Bates will travel to Jackson in January to lobby on behalf of a bill they are helping to write that would require sex education curriculum to be medically accurate.
“I think Teen Health Mississippi and the work it is doing is so important in this given time in Mississippi and in our country,” Yarbrough said. “I think it does an amazing job giving young people the platform to actually take it upon themselves to say this is what we want our education to look like in our community.”
Bates and Yarbrough are on the organization’s Mississippi Youth Council, which includes 10 youth activists. Each year, the council members start with Mississippi’s current sex education law and suggest changes.
A coordinator from the organization then works with elected officials to get a proposed bill sponsored. Once sponsored, it goes through the bill submission process, in which its given a number.
After the bill gets a number, organization members start phone banking and contacting elected officials, so they know to watch for the bill.
The process continues through January. Then, the council goes to the state Capitol to lobby representatives. The council focuses on committees for education and public health because the bill will “most likely be in one of those two committees,” according to Bates.
Last year, their bill got a sponsor but died in committee.
“THMS is an important organization not only for its mission in increasing access to sex education and youth-friendly healthcare but also for its mission in helping young people realize that they matter,” Bates said. “It’s an empowering notion — one many youth may have never had — to hear that their rights are important and deserve to be taken seriously.”
Bates is known in the organization as “the consent girl,” a nickname she got after speaking about the topic. She described herself as “a huge advocate for consent education,” and THMS has given her an outlet to advocate for consent at a legislative level.
The proposed 2020 bill will include better collaboration between the Department of Health and the Department of Education on comprehensive sex education, along with changes in language to increase inclusivity and understandability.
Mississippi consistently ranks in the top five states for sexually transmitted disease rates, according to a 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mississippi also ranks third for highest teen pregnancy rates, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
Plan International attributes high teen pregnancy rates to the “lack of information about sexual and reproductive health and rights,” as well as “inadequate access to services tailored to young people.”
“When I look at the issue and how this is a fight over what’s true, and young people having access to the truth, so they can really have a better life and be more autonomous. I just believe that is so important right now,” Yarbrough said.
