Sexual education moved from strictly telling youth not to have sexual intercourse, to explaining the results of not taking the proper safety-measures (Pardini).
When the AIDs epidemic occurred in the late 1980s, the U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop demanded even further detailed sexual education in schools (Pardini). This was not only to prevent teenage pregnancy, but to protect youth against sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS. This brought an end to conservatives calling for a ban on sexual education in schools. However, it did not quiet them completely. They changed their argument to stating that if there has to be sexual education taught in schools throughout the United States, then they should only teach the importance of abstinence. The majority of the conservatives teaching tactics were fear-based to promote abstinence(Pardini).
Most public schools across the United States have incorporated sexual education in their schools at this point in time. The controversy that continues to come up between health professionals and conservatists is simply exactly what schools should have in their curriculum to teach the students, and what should be left to the family of the students. However, sexual education has progressed from simply teaching abstinence to including facts on sexual development, reproduction, relationships, affection, intimacy, body image, and gender roles. Conservatists continue to fight to get some of this information taken from the curriculum, but they cannot deny that the teen pregnancy and sexual transmitted disease rates have dropped dramatically over the last two decades. In 2009, there were 39.1 births per 1000 women between the ages of 15 and 19. This was the mark of an all-time low in teenage birth rates. Also, in 2008 teenage abortion rate was the lowest the nation had ever witnessed at 17.8 abortions per 1000 women. That percentage was 59 percent lower than its peak in 1988.
