Dive Brief:
- Currently, 32 states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring sex education to some degree. Only five states — California, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington — have laws requiring comprehensive sex education, according to an analysis by Sex Ed for Social Change, a social justice organization advocating for accurate sex education in schools.
- According to the organization's report, 38 states and the District of Columbia require schools to emphasize or stress the importance of abstinence over other options when providing instruction on sex education, HIV or sexually transmitted infections. Fifteen of those states provide abstinence-only instruction.
- Policy proposals restricting sex education — such as anti-abortion and abstinence-only instruction bills — have spread in states during the 2026 legislative sessions, according to a separate report in July by the organization.
Dive Insight:
Between January and June, 174 bills that were introduced related to sex ed. Out of those, 54% were restrictive in some way.
Anti-abortion curriculum legislation was enacted between January and June in four states — Louisiana, Alabama, South Dakota and Wisconsin — and abstinence-only instruction was enacted in Alabama.
“What young people are allowed to learn about their bodies is increasingly being determined by politics — not by what they need to be healthy and safe," said Callie Simon, executive director of SIECUS, in a statement last month.
The spread of anti-abortion and abstinence-only curriculum comes as the Trump administration has attempted to promote the same at the federal level.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration cancelled 53 of 66 Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program federal grants, which were aimed at reducing teen pregnancy rates.
The bipartisan program — established by Congress in 2010 — funds about $101 million in grants annually to improve the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of youth by using evidence-based education programs, including those in schools.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services canceled most of the existing TPP grants while requiring that future recipients include “abstinence-only ‘sexual risk avoidance’” education, among other changes, according to court documents.
In August, a federal judge partially blocked the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul the TPP Program, saying the administration's new emphasis on abstinence instead of contraception for pregnancy prevention — and termination of grants that don’t align with that approach — was carried out without going through the proper administrative channels.
The administration’s approach stressed “a nebulous concept that appears to elevate fertility and marital procreation over well-tested forms of contraception and pregnancy prevention,” Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in the Hennepin County v. United States Department of Health and Human Services decision.
