How Planned Parenthood Teaches Sex Education

Planned Parenthood is the single largest provider of sex education in the United States, reaching 1.2 million people with education and outreach each year.

Planned Parenthood sex educators teach across the lifespan — including students in elementary, middle, and high school as well as young adults, parents, and older adults. They cover topics like communication skills, decision making, birth control, how to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs), healthy relationships, consent, body image, anatomy, and puberty.

The Sex Education Programs Provided by Planned Parenthood Educators Include:

• Proven-to-work unintended pregnancy and STI prevention programs
• Comprehensive sex education programs for young people
• Peer education programs for youth and adults
• Programs for LGBTQ+ youth
• Parent and family programs
• Training for professionals

Planned Parenthood also reaches young people online to ensure they can access sex education and information, even if they aren’t getting that in school. 

Sex education is incredibly popular.

Nearly everyone wants young people to get sex education. In fact, over 90% of parents support sex education in both middle and high school. The vast majority of parents, including both Democrats and Republicans, want this education to include topics like birth control, healthy relationships, abstinence, and sexual orientation. So, sex education should be a non-issue in this country.

Learn more about what Planned Parenthood believes sex education should and could be.

Planned Parenthood Supports Equity in Sex Education

Planned Parenthood also believes in making sex education more equitable. For example, LGBTQ+ youth deserve to learn in settings that are inclusive of their experiences — far too many LGBTQ+ youth are sitting in classrooms where their teachers and textbooks fail to address their experiences. 

Planned Parenthood teamed up with other sex education advocates to call on educators to make sex education LGBTQ-inclusive. Read the call to action.

We also believe that sex education should be culturally appropriate and tailored to the needs of each community — there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to sex education. That’s why Planned Parenthood has programs like Promotores, or adult peer education programs where members of the Latinx community provide sex education for their communities.

Planned Parenthood also brings sex education programs to places like foster care and criminal justice facilities to help ensure that even the most vulnerable and marginalized young people have access to sex education.