Word: condom
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...York City is the biggest battlefront, but the war over condom distribution in schools is spreading across the country. One high school in Cambridge, Mass., three in Chicago, three in Los Angeles and one in Miami already dispense the devices to students through in-school health clinics, if parents give their consent. Sharon Pratt Dixon, the newly inaugurated mayor of Washington, backed school-based condom programs during her election campaign, provided students receive instruction in human reproduction and safe-sex practices...
...most places, the idea has met with anger, outrage -- and defeat. Last fall a proposal in rural Talbot County, Md., to make condoms available in high schools failed to pass the school board by just one vote. In prosperous Marin County, Calif., Tamalpais High School abandoned a plan for condom distribution after a coalition of pro-life supporters and parents filed suit to stop it. Los Angeles' pilot reproductive-health project overcame vigorous opposition only when the city agreed to a parental-consent feature; about 75% of parents at the three participating schools have acceded...
...challenge more grave than in New York City, which accounts for just 3% of the nation's 13- to 21-year-olds, but harbors 20% of all reported AIDS cases in that age group. It was the sheer size of the problem that prompted Fernandez to suggest the free-condom idea as part of an expanded AIDS-education program for the city's 261,000 high school students. Under the plan, staff volunteers at each school would hand out condoms, along with a booklet explaining their use, to every student who wants them. Sex counseling would be available but would...
Critics also argue that condoms, which can have a failure rate of between 10% and 15%, are not the best protection against AIDS. Human Life International, a Maryland-based Christian sexuality-education group, has vowed to sue the New York City board of education if any student gets pregnant or contracts a sexually transmitted disease while using a school-supplied condom. The alternative that schools should be promoting, critics argue, is chastity...
...fact, many parents seem relieved to have the issue taken out of their hands. A Gallup poll for the daily New York Newsday found that 54% of parents with children in the New York City public schools approve of the condom plan. There is little opposition from students. "This isn't telling us to be sexually active," argues Mike Hurdle, 17, a senior at Queens' Andrew Jackson High School. "It's just saying, if you are, you should be protected...