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=== Transcript ===
 
=== Transcript ===
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We've been told that Human Rights is the very heart of our foreign policy. If that is true, it explains the inconsistency of that policy.
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Do you remember when we were told that the increase in the divorce rate and the number of children born out of wedlock were problems sex education in the schools could solve?
 
I'll be right back.
 
I'll be right back.
  
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By coincidence, three situations dealing with our policy on Human Rights became news items almost simultaneously in recent weeks and they pointed up our government's inconsistency with regard to this subject. In fact, it is an inconsistency that perhaps should be called hypocrisy.
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Recently a Los Angeles newspaper editorialized about the increasing birth rate among unwed teenage mothers, calling it a personal disaster for them and their children and a social disaster for the country. The writer then confirmed his opinion by citing statistics developed in a two-year study by a task force of the House Select Committee on Population. The figures are indeed sobering, one million adolescent girls get pregnant each year and a third of them have abortions. Of the six hundred thousand who gave birth last year, almost half, two hundred and fifty thousand, were under seventeen years of age. About seventy percent of the pregnant girls do not finish high school and ninety percent of those under age 15, drop out of school.
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>>MISSING<<
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IN 1976, about half of the public funds expended for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 4.6 billion, went to mothers who first gave birth as teenagers. Births among unwed teenagers have more than doubled since 1960 and the rate of births to girls under 15 has increased 33% in the last 10 years. 50% of unwed mothers are in their teens.
  
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The first news item was that our State Department has decided that violation of Human Rights is no longer a barrier to normalizing relations with Castro's Cuba. We still have two other unresolved matters standing in the way: Cuba's forces in Africa and a lack of compensation for private property seized by Castro during the revolution, but the slate is clean on Human Rights, because a few hundred of Castro's thousands of political prisoners have been freed and allowed to join their families in the United States.
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The editorial went on to support proposals by a member of Congress to increase funds to extend family planning services to more teenagers and for an extension of sex education in our schools. It was pointed out that these proposals could lead to a saving of money because so many of these teenage mothers became dependent on welfare.
  
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The second item had to do with a cutback at economic aid in Nicaragua and the withdrawal of American personnel. This we're doing because, according to the State Department, President Samosa is in violation of our standards of Human Rights. He may be, I don't know. I do know, because it's a matter of record, that the revolutionary forces who are fighting against his regime are Marxists for the most part and many were trained and armed by Castro's Cuba. so it's one off and one on our Human Rights blacklist.
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I've never been against saving tax dollars but I wonder if our first concern shouldn't be for saving these girls from tragedy which could very well affect their entire lives. I'm not sure that more sex education as it is presently taught is the answer. Please note that I said "as it is presently taught." I'm sure all of us are aware of the importance of young people knowing, as we used to say, the Facts of Life, but in our concern less sex education in the schools violate religious beliefs have we been teaching sex as a purely physiological function like eating when you're hungry? Can we completely divorce sex education, as I'm afraid we do, from any association with moral behavior without implanting in young minds that it has no more significance than eating a sandwich? So why not? A california scholar has written an essay, "Turning Children Into Sex Experts." The author says, quote, "The seventh grader in my city is advised to set for himself a purely personal standard of sexual behavior. No religious views, no community moral standards are to deflect him from his overriding purposes of self-discovery, self-assertion and self-gratification." Unquote.
  
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Item number three is the release of a report that has been in the making for about a year and a half. It was in September 1977 that Panama invited the Organization of American States to send its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to visit Panama and investigate what were called unfounded, unjust and irresponsible charges of violations of Human Rights. These charges had been made in the discussion and debate over the Panama Canal treaties. The results of that investigation have just been made public and they confirmed the charges which the government of Panama had declared were unfounded and unjust. The commission concludes that between 1968 and 1972, political activity was practically suppressed by the military regime. From '72 to '77, Panamaians were deported in violation of the constitution.
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A judge has advocated lowering the age of consent to thirteen, because children are more sexually active these days.
  
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Restrictions were imposed on freedom of assembly, expression and association and there was interference in the judicial process. All of that is only for openers. The commission reported on torture tactics engaged in with the Panama National Guard, electric shocks to the vital and most sensitive parts of the body, physical beatings of male and female prisoners usually with a hoses, the insulting fondling of female prisoners and threat of rape and long interrogation of prisoners while denying them food, water and sleep.
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Before we accept the congressman's idea, that more sex education is an answer to teenage pregnancy, shouldn't we ask if anyone has done a comparison of the situation before there was such education in the schools and after? I've had a report from one district that the venereal disease rate among young people in that district went up 800 percent in the first few years after sex education became a part of the curriculum.
  
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The commission also reported a written statement from Leopoldo Aragon, who was a political prisoner for two years and then exiled to Sweden where he burned himself to death in a protest against our turning over the canal to Panama. Here is some of what he wrote, "Prisoners were running like cattle under the whippings and savage cries of the guards who were hitting them clubs." In addition to this he told of prisoners being hung from tree limbs by their wrists, chaining them to thorn trees and tying them on top of ant tunnels.
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Before we do more of what we're doing, why don't we find out if what we're doing is part of the problem.
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This October 1st we begin the turnover of the canal to Panama.
 
  
 
This is Ronald Reagan.
 
This is Ronald Reagan.
  
 
Thanks for listening.
 
Thanks for listening.
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Latest revision as of 15:22, 7 May 2022

- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1979

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Sex Education[edit]

Transcript[edit]

Do you remember when we were told that the increase in the divorce rate and the number of children born out of wedlock were problems sex education in the schools could solve? I'll be right back.

Recently a Los Angeles newspaper editorialized about the increasing birth rate among unwed teenage mothers, calling it a personal disaster for them and their children and a social disaster for the country. The writer then confirmed his opinion by citing statistics developed in a two-year study by a task force of the House Select Committee on Population. The figures are indeed sobering, one million adolescent girls get pregnant each year and a third of them have abortions. Of the six hundred thousand who gave birth last year, almost half, two hundred and fifty thousand, were under seventeen years of age. About seventy percent of the pregnant girls do not finish high school and ninety percent of those under age 15, drop out of school. >>MISSING<< IN 1976, about half of the public funds expended for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 4.6 billion, went to mothers who first gave birth as teenagers. Births among unwed teenagers have more than doubled since 1960 and the rate of births to girls under 15 has increased 33% in the last 10 years. 50% of unwed mothers are in their teens.

The editorial went on to support proposals by a member of Congress to increase funds to extend family planning services to more teenagers and for an extension of sex education in our schools. It was pointed out that these proposals could lead to a saving of money because so many of these teenage mothers became dependent on welfare.

I've never been against saving tax dollars but I wonder if our first concern shouldn't be for saving these girls from tragedy which could very well affect their entire lives. I'm not sure that more sex education as it is presently taught is the answer. Please note that I said "as it is presently taught." I'm sure all of us are aware of the importance of young people knowing, as we used to say, the Facts of Life, but in our concern less sex education in the schools violate religious beliefs have we been teaching sex as a purely physiological function like eating when you're hungry? Can we completely divorce sex education, as I'm afraid we do, from any association with moral behavior without implanting in young minds that it has no more significance than eating a sandwich? So why not? A california scholar has written an essay, "Turning Children Into Sex Experts." The author says, quote, "The seventh grader in my city is advised to set for himself a purely personal standard of sexual behavior. No religious views, no community moral standards are to deflect him from his overriding purposes of self-discovery, self-assertion and self-gratification." Unquote.

A judge has advocated lowering the age of consent to thirteen, because children are more sexually active these days.

Before we accept the congressman's idea, that more sex education is an answer to teenage pregnancy, shouldn't we ask if anyone has done a comparison of the situation before there was such education in the schools and after? I've had a report from one district that the venereal disease rate among young people in that district went up 800 percent in the first few years after sex education became a part of the curriculum.

Before we do more of what we're doing, why don't we find out if what we're doing is part of the problem.

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.

 

Details[edit]

Batch Number79-08-A3
Production Date05/29/1979
Book/PageRPtV-446
AudioYes
Youtube?No

Added Notes[edit]

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