Making Change in Washington State
By Elizabeth, a State Activist
 My name Is Elizabeth, and I’m 18 years old and from Seattle, Washington, where I intern for NARAL Pro-Choice Washington. NARAL is currently working on getting Emergency Contraception (Plan B) access available everywhere in WA State. We are making sure pharmacies know about Plan B and are finding out if they stock it. At the end of January we will be lobbying in the State capital, Olympia, to advocate for Emergency Contraception rights in the state. One of the big issues with Emergency Contraception is that people think it is an abortion pill, but Plan B is just a higher dose of birth control. It should be available over the counter at all pharmacies.
NARAL also works closely with the Healthy Youth Alliance and recently passed a new law in Washington State requiring schools to teach comprehensive sex education! Because of this new law, the Bush Administration cut off $800,000 in Title V grants for abstinence-only programs in Washington State. Comprehensive sex education is important for all youth but especially for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, or Questioning) youth. Abstinence-only programs teach that you should wait until marriage to have sex. For LGBTQ youth, waiting until marriage is honestly not an option because it is completely illegal in most states. Youth learn that the only right way to be is in a heterosexual relationship and that they must wait until they are married before having sex. This way of teaching is completely biased and unsafe for all youth.
Abstinence-only education teaches not only that LGBTQ people don’t matter, it also teaches heterosexual youth that the only protection for them is to abstain from having sex until marriage. Here’s a quick statistic for you: “By age 19, about 70 percent of American youth have had sex.” This is why we need comprehensive sex education. It teaches everyone, including LGBTQ youth, information they need to know about their sexuality and how to have a safe and healthy life whether he/she is having sex or abstaining from sex. One day I hope that with the work of NARAL and Advocates for Youth we will be able to make sure that abstinence-only education is not federally funded and that instead we have federal funding for comprehensive sex education!
Working with NARAL has provided me with some amazing opportunities to inform other youth about sex education and the bias LGBTQ youth face in sex education. Recently I spoke at NARAL’s “I Heart Choice” Youth Leadership Summit. I was the one youth on the panel and the only one speaking about LGBTQ issues within sex education. Being able to inform other youth about biased abstinence-only education means the world to me. If only one person in that audience heard me clearly, then that is one person who now knows that we need comprehensive sex education.
I also have been speaking on some other local LGBTQ panels where we go to local high schools and also talk to big local businesses about being an LGBTQ youth. This helps our audiences understand that we are exactly the same. We are all exactly the same. We are people.
2008 should be a good year that will hopefully bring a lot of laws in favor of sex education and human rights in general. So cheers to the New Year!
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