As a society, we have been told that the best sort of sex education in schools are ones that were contraception-focused, and that free contraception in schools reduced teen pregnancy. A new study out of England is casting some doubt on this assumption.
It seems like some folks (like Senator Bernie Sanders) would like to bring the idea of a religious test for government office back into vogue. They’d like to make sure that either you’re not of a particular religion, or at least are someone who doesn’t really take that particular religion too seriously.
Mentioned links:
Teen pregnancy rate falls 42.6 percent after UK cuts sex-ed, birth-control funding
No Religious Test Clause [Wikipedia]
Watch Bernie Sanders Attack a Christian Nominee and Impose an Unconstitutional Religious Test for Public Office

Show transcript
As a society, we have been told that the best sort of sex education in schools are ones that were contraception-focused, and that free contraception in schools reduced teen pregnancy. A new study out of England is casting some doubt on this assumption.
Between 2009 and 2014, the UK had to make some serious cuts to its budget, and that included providing tax money for sex-ed in schools and free birth control. Now, to listen to the Left, you’d have to believe that once that happened, teen pregnancies would start to rise. That has been their mantra for 2 generations. And so we had a perfect situation to test that hypothesis.
Testing a hypothesis; it’s the scientific method. Let’s see what this experiment found.
Turns out that teen pregnancies went down. In a survey of 149 municipalities, the rate went down. And not just by a little bit, by 43%, down to the lowest level since 1969! In fact, where the cuts were the most drastic, the pregnancy rate cuts were the largest.
Now, will the allegedly “pro-science” Left take this scientific evidence and consider it when forming public policy? Well, based on what they’ve done over the 30 years, probably not. I predict this because, after that 30 years ending in 1999, England wound up with one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe. So since this has become something of an article of faith with the Left, such that they keep doubling down on the policy in spite of the stats going the wrong way, I really doubt this will affect them.
And speaking of doubling down, England made contraception-based sex-ed compulsory throughout the nation’s public high schools in its “Children and Social Work Act” of 2017.
Is this just a British thing? No. At the link in the show notes, there is also an example of this same thing happening in the US during the Obama administration.
So when I predict that the Left will not give up on this idea despite this information, I’m not exactly rolling dice.

There is a clause in Article VI, Section 3 of the US Constitution that says this, “…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Let me give you a little background on why we have that clause there. In the Europe that the Pilgrims and other colonists left, including England, there were religious tests to hold public office. Generally you had to be a member of the established church or swear an oath to it. Often it was to make sure that you were not of a particular religion or denomination. But one of the big reasons colonists came here was to be free of that, and so religious liberty was written into the very First Amendment, as well as in other areas of the Constitution,