Group Wants Abortion Included in RSE
31.01.2019
The Abortion Rights Campaign is seeking to have abortion included in the Relationships and Sexuality Education curriculum. The ARC, which organises the “March for Choice” and took part in the campaign to remove the 8th Amendment, is also seeking other changes to the curriculum, including the removal of a school’s right to teach RSE in a manner consistent with its ethos.
In a submission to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment’s review of the Relationships and Sexuality Education programme in primary and post-primary schools, the ARC demanded that “[c]ontraception and abortion should form an important part of these discussions and should always be framed in a rights-based, patient-centred fashion, where the sexually active and/or pregnant person is the decision maker.”
The ARC is critical of the fact that under the current Education Act, “schools are free to deliver RSE according to their own values, which are often conservative and religious”. Children, according to the ARC, should all receive the same RSE, “regardless of their school’s ethos or their teachers’ beliefs or preferences.” “The Education Act should no longer allow schools to deliver sexuality education in accordance with a school’s ethos,” the abortion group claims.
Other demands made by the ARC in its submission include that:
- RSE should be LGBT+ inclusive and should educate students on LGBT+ rights
- RSE should include information about different types of bodies, including trans and intersex people’s bodies. Young people should be assured that there is no such thing as a “normal body”
- RSE should address different kinds of sex, including a broad range of acts with or without other people
- Laws governing the age of consent should not restrict young people’s access to information about sexuality and abortion
- RSE should teach children and young people about safe sex and contraception, including how to access and use contraception.
In addition, the ARC wants the RSE programme to be extended to children outside the formal education system, “to systematically provide these young people with comprehensive sexuality education”.
Abortion Rights Campaign. January 16.