Healthy Teens Act
(A.2856 & S.1342)
The Healthy Teens Act establishes an age-appropriate sex education grant program through the Department of Health to be a comprehensive age-appropriate program conducted by an eligible applicant; authorizes the commissioner to determine certain topics of instruction and makes provisions for the
application of grants.
The Healthy Teens Act, sponsored in the Assembly by The Hon. Richard Gottfried, passed resoundingly 3/17/08: 130(y)/14(n).
It was 'delivered' to the Senate, where it is sponsored by The Hon.
George Winner. It now awaits action by the Health Committee.
Additional sponsors from Westchester County include: Galef, Paulin, Pretlow, Spano, Brodsky, Latimer. No assemblymember from Westchester voted against the bill.
This important legislation passed the Assembly in March 2007 also but died in the Senate. Their inactivity inspired this derisive editorial cartoon by Ann Telnaes.
Writing in support of this bill last year NARAL Pro-Choice New York asserted:
Young people need facts in order to make safe and healthy decisions about their sexual health.
Our state currently has no designated funding stream for medically accurate, comprehensive sex education in schools. Therefore, our young people are not getting comprehensive, age appropriate information to make good decisions.
In New York State, where rates of unintended teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections are among the highest in the country, comprehensive sex education is desperately needed. The Healthy Teens Act would create a grant program to help schools and communities provide age-appropriate and accurate sex education to young people.
In essence the Healthy Teens Act protects our young people from the dangerous misinformation which is integral to any program funded by the federal "abstinence only" effort. |MORE
This page last updated March 23, 2008 14:52 .