The New York City Department of Education requires high schools to maintain Health Resource Rooms where students receive free condoms, health information, and health referrals from trained staff. This policy was approved in 1991 as part an HIV/AIDS prevention program. While all students receive information and referrals to health services, parents or other legal guardians can decide to opt a student out of the condom availability program. Information on the correct and consistent use of condoms is also taught in Health education classes in grades 6 through 12.
An early study published in the American Journal of Public Health (1997) compared teenage sexual activity in Chicago and New York and found that condom availability in schools had a “significant effect on condom use” and did not increase rates of sexual activity. The authors concluded that school-based condom was an important tool for lowering the “risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases for urban teenagers,” especially those who had multiple partners.
HIV/AIDS continues to be a problem in New York City where more than 100,000 people are infected. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), half of the newly infected people were exposed to the virus before they reached age 25. A CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that approximately 40% of high school students in New York City are engaged in behavior that put them at higher risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS.
From the outset, the New York Roman Catholic Archdiocese fought to block the condom availability program, including support for a lawsuit. However, in 1992, the State Supreme Court ruled that the program did not violate a religious freedom or parental rights because participation was not mandatory.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage, but about half of high school seniors are already sexually active. Many teenagers accept church teaching and plan to remain abstinent, but do not. Studies show that teens who take a “virginity pledge” become sexually active at the same rate and age as teens who do not “pledge,” but they are less likely to use contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
The Roman Catholic Church now has leverage that permits it to prevent thousands of public high school students in New York City from receiving condoms and sex education. Since 2005, the city has financially bailed out the church by renting facilities it no longer needs, including buildings used by at least 50 public schools. In 2012, the last year that figures were made public, the city paid the Roman Catholic Church $27 million. As part of the lease agreements, which are essentially backdoor public subsidies to churches, sex education, unless it promotes abstinence only, and condom availability are banned in the buildings, depriving students of easy access to mandated and essential programs. Any real sex education, has to be conducted off-site. It is not clear where a student would have to go to get a condom.
A study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that since 1991 the teen birth rate in the United States declined by 64%. Birth control, including condom use, has been a major reason for a declining teen pregnancy rate in the United States. Between 2007 and 2012 alone the percentage of sexually active teens using some form of contraception increased from 78% to 86%. This is despite the fact that many states place restrictions on the ability of sexually active teens younger than 18 to purchase or receive contraceptives.
No official list seems to exist of New York City public high schools located in church-owned buildings. High schools in leased buildings, but not necessarily from church groups, in Brooklyn alone include All City Leadership Secondary School, Brooklyn Frontiers High School in downtown Brooklyn; West Brooklyn Community High School; W.E.B. Dubois Academic High School; South Brooklyn Community High School; East Brooklyn Community High School; Brownsville Academy High School; EBC High School for Public Service – Bushwick; Bedford Academy High School; Brooklyn College Academy; Benjamin Banneker Academy; ACORN Community High School; Brooklyn High School for Law and Technology; Aspirations Diploma Plus High School; and El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice.
We have health and pregnancy prevention programs that work. Unfortunately, their benefits are denied to New York City teens that attend school in buildings rented from the Roman Catholic Church.
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