Sexual Health Educator Concerned About Abbotsford’s Focus on Abstinence

When the Abbotsford School District extends an invitation to a guest speaker, it asks them to sign a letter acknowledging abstinence as the only way teenagers can be “truly safe” from unwanted sexual outcomes.

The letter template, last revised in 2024, says: “In the area of human sexuality instruction, a primary focus will be on sexual abstinence, as this is the only truly safe way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.”

Kristen Gilbert, director of education at Options for Sexual Health and a sexual health educator for 20 years, told The Tyee that “simply isn’t true.”

She said that by emphasizing abstinence, Abbotsford is straying outside of B.C.’s comprehensive sex education curriculum, which could mean students are ill-prepared to navigate healthy romantic and sexual relationships later in life.

If students are missing out on comprehensive information about sexuality because of this policy, the impact is serious, she said.

“I would go so far as to say their right to education is being violated. That’s quite serious,” Gilbert said.

“What helps in reducing unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections is knowledge, not lack of knowledge,” she said.

The Abbotsford School District includes 46 schools attended by over 20,000 students.

Nathan Ngieng, superintendent of the Abbotsford School District, told The Tyee its schools still provide a comprehensive sex education to students. The wording around abstinence is a reflection of the “context” of the community and what is important to parents, he said.

Working “hand in hand” with the community helps invite more people into the conversation to establish the partnership between parents and teachers that is needed to educate students “in the way that makes the most sense and is accurate,” he said.

“We are bound by the curriculum,” he added. “Our obligation is to make sure that they are equipped with the factual information, well-rounded information, so they can make good decisions about their health and well-being.”

Ngieng said the wording that abstinence is the only “truly safe” way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections could be considered for revision.

All parents in B.C. are permitted to opt their children out of learning sex ed in school, he said.

When parents choose this option, they are responsible for their child learning through an alternative delivery model and still have to report back to the teacher to confirm the learning objectives were met, he said.

Comprehensive sex ed

B.C. introduced an age-appropriate sex ed curriculum 30 years ago, Gilbert said. Elementary school students are taught the names of body parts, how their bodies belong to them and whom they can talk to about their body and relationships in their family and communities.

The goal is to get students comfortable with the topic so they’re ready to hear more complex information starting in Grade 8 to help them make decisions in the future they feel great about, Gilbert said.

That includes abstaining from sex until they feel ready, Gilbert said.

Sex ed isn’t just about learning how to use a condom, she said. It’s about learning how to talk about a potentially difficult subject so that youths can navigate their own sexuality, consent and partner’s consent later in life, she said.

Many young British Columbians will become sexually active in the last two years of high school or the next couple of years after that, Gilbert said. Comprehensive sex ed means young people have access to all of the information and resources they need to make decisions that are best for them, she added.

The data about how helpful that is is “overwhelming,” she said.

Young people who have received comprehensive sex ed are more likely to wait longer before they start having sex; wait until they feel ready to start having sex; and place higher value on love and connection in sexual relationships.

By comparison, limiting the information young people have access to or telling them how they should behave means young people will still have sex, but they will be more secretive and have less knowledge to help them avoid pregnancy and STIs, manage consent conversations, have healthy relationships or seek care and support if something goes wrong, she said.

When young people aren’t taught about sex, they turn to porn for answers, Gilbert said.

And that’s a problem.

‘Porn is not for kids’

“Porn is not for kids. Porn is for adults, and it’s not for education, it’s for entertainment,” she said.

Porn often has “really violent depictions of sex,” she added. “A lot of demeaning portrayals of women, trans people, gay folks. If we learn about sex through porn, we’re learning about the worst of humanity, rather than hearing from a reliable adult or professional about what a healthy relationship and sexuality look like.”

Gilbert said that when she’s teaching sex ed, young people will ask her about exaggerated things from porn that are depicted as normal, such as choking.

Students will ask, “Is choking normal? Is that what my partner expects me to do? Am I supposed to like it?” she said.

Choking, or strangulation, is extremely dangerous. One campaign in Australia is working to highlight how there is no safe way to choke someone or be choked.

Abbotsford School District’s Ngieng said community conversations are happening in response to what kids are exposed to, which includes how to invite parents to have conversations with their kids about sensitive topics.

“We do recognize that inappropriate content can lead to false notions about what is a healthy relationship,” including “the potential for more prevalence towards intimate partner violence,” he said.

Four out of 10 use the pullout method

Every five years the B.C. Adolescent Health Survey collects data from tens of thousands of Grade 7 to 12 students across the province.

The survey is a helpful way to see how sex ed translates into sexual health for young people, Gilbert said.

In the 2023 edition, Abbotsford student data was reported under Fraser East, which included the Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Mission, Fraser-Cascade and Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie Britannique school districts.

Students in Fraser East were just as likely to have had oral sex and sexual intercourse as the provincial average, at 17 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively. Most youths who had had sex started doing so at 15 or 16, and one-quarter of non-binary youths said they’d started having sex at age 12 or younger.

Just over half of students in the Fraser region, at 55 per cent, used condoms the last time they had sex, while 44 per cent used the withdrawal method, which the study notes is an unreliable method to prevent pregnancy. One per cent of youths said they had been pregnant or were involved in a pregnancy.

The provincial average for using condoms is 53 per cent, with 39 per cent of youths using the pullout method.

Of the 75 per cent of Fraser students who said they’d received sex ed in school, 27 per cent said it wasn’t helpful, compared with 48 per cent who said it was.

Students who found sex ed helpful were more likely to use a condom or other barrier during sex and were less likely to access porn for education than students who didn’t find sex ed helpful, the study noted.

Across Canada, there’s an extraordinarily high level of support among parents for students receiving sex ed in schools.

Gilbert said she hopes parents and students will push for better education in Abbotsford.

“One thing that youth are really good at is advocating for their rights,” she said. “I hope that they will hear that they deserve better and they deserve more.”

If students are looking for reliable resources, Gilbert recommends calling or texting Options for Sexual Health’s Sex Sense line or visiting its website or the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada’s website SexandU.ca.