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Sex Education Crusader Brings Passion Here

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN

sackerman@tampatrib.com

Published: February 10, 2009

TAMPA - As a teenager, Shelby Knox took steps to prove abstinence-only sex education wasn't working in her Lubbock, Texas, high school.

Now she wants to prove it to the rest of the country.

With teen pregnancy rates on the rise and one in four teen girls contracting a sexually transmitted disease, Knox is an ardent opponent of such programs.

"They're more of a political decision rather than a medical or health decision," said the nationally known sex education advocate touring Florida this week to stoke the flames of a movement she likes to call the "new feminist revolution."

New, perhaps, to young women getting involved for the first time in a battle that has long waged in America.

"It's still the same fight," conceded the 22-year-old University of Texas graduate. "Reproductive issues are still our No. 1 concern."

The subject of an award-winning documentary that chronicled her efforts in Lubbock, Knox is the speaker today for "A Choice Affair: Sex, Lies and Education," a program by Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida.

The noon event at Maestro's in the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center commemorates the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark court case giving women the right to choose an abortion.

Knox was a member of a teen commission exploring issues that concerned high school students in 2001 back in Lubbock. Many of the teens brought up the city's teen pregnancy rates, among the highest in the nation, and their disappointment in their sex education classes.

Those classes still don't teach teenagers what they need to know, Knox lamented.

"We haven't been trusting our young people," she said. "Giving someone an umbrella doesn't mean it's going to rain. Prevention doesn't cause the problem."

At 15, Knox set out to change Lubbock's sex education policy. She started polling teens and getting them to sign petitions and soon attracted the attention of two New York filmmakers. Two years later, the city council voted to disband the teen commission.

At the same time, Knox said, pregnancy rates were declining. Health officials attributed it to the very public conversation about sex education, she said.

"The Education of Shelby Knox," by Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, was released in 2005 and won an excellence award in the cinematography and documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival.

Her stop in Tampa comes at a time when the national teen birth rate has begun to rise again after a 15-year decline.

A report released last month by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that of the 4.3 million births in 2006, the most recent year available, 435,000 were to mothers ages 15 to 19. That was about 21,000 more than in 2005.

Nationally, Florida rates sixth for teen births, with 45 births per 1,000 teens 15 to 19. Preliminary figures from the state Office of Vital Statistics show that in 2007, the state recorded 25,688 live births to moms 15 to 19. The prior year saw 25,507.

Hillsborough County ranked No. 4 in the state for teen births with 2,078 in 2007, 2,048 in 2006 and 1,856 in 2005.

Miami-Dade was No. 1 with 3,073 in 2007.

Locally, some experts blame the increase on abstinence-only education emphasized during President Bush's tenure. More federal dollars went toward programs that did not teach teens how to use condoms or and other contraception, they've said.

Others cite legislative funding cuts and shifts in priorities that have caused some pregnancy prevention programs to fall by the wayside.

Then there's also society, which critics say glamorizes pregnant teens, from Nickelodeon star Jamie Lynn Spears to Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol.

"We have a generation of young people," Knox said, "who have been failed by abstinence-only programs."

A bill that would take abstinence-only off the menu in Florida is expected to go to legislators this year. The Healthy Teens Act would require every school receiving public money and teaching sex education to include comprehensive information about disease and pregnancy prevention as well as abstinence.

For more information about the event, go to www.myplannedparenthood .org or call (941) 365-3913, ext. 1124. Tickets cost $50.

Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144.

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