For Deep East Texas teens, accessing sex education and contraception is next to impossible

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Reproductive Rights Reporting Fund.

SABINE COUNTY — When condoms have been distributed at a profession truthful 5 years in the past, West Sabine High School’s seventh and eighth graders took handfuls and tucked them inside their jackets and pants pockets. It set subject journey chaperone Carnelius Gilder right into a panic.

Gilder had pushed the scholars to a church within the space to attend the profession truthful. Students had attended it in earlier years with no issues; Gilder was bowled over to see a vendor freely giving contraception for the primary time.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We cannot bring these home,” Gilder, now West Sabine faculty district’s superintendent, recalled considering. “These are junior high kids. And we’re in a church.”

In rural Sabine County, part of Deep East Texas close to Louisiana’s western border, Gilder knew many mother and father who would mild up his telephone if college students got here house with condoms from a school-sanctioned subject journey. So earlier than the scholars obtained again on the bus, Gilder instructed all of them to empty their pockets.

West Sabine High School college students haven’t been again to the profession truthful since. The faculty district now organizes its personal well being truthful, which oldsters attend, and faculty officers can resolve whether or not contraception will supplied to the scholars.

“East Texans believe in and have a great deal of morality,” mentioned Gilder, who graduated from West Sabine High School in 2002. “And, well, you have to include the parents.”

In Sabine County, pine timber outnumber the individuals. To commute between Pineland and Hemphill, the 2 cities that anchor the county, residents drive down a street that winds by means of a nationwide forest. The cities are dotted with church buildings that loom giant in every day neighborhood life. Bible scriptures are printed on plaques in native shops and even in Gilder’s workplace.

Research has proven entry to contraception and complete sex education prevents unplanned pregnancies. But for sexually lively teenagers making an attempt not to get pregnant in Sabine County, it’s exhausting to entry both.

Sex education in Texas is taught amid tight parameters and bureaucratic strings. Texas colleges have to provide well being class on the center faculty stage, however mother and father should decide their youngsters in to any classes about sexual well being. And when lecturers do contact on sex education, state regulation requires them to stress abstinence as the popular selection earlier than marriage.

Even if teenagers on this area need contraception, it’s practically impossible to get with out parental consent. In small cities like Hemphill and Pineland, mother and father have eyes and ears in every single place, making teenagers reluctant to go to the native Brookshire Brothers or greenback retailer to buy condoms. They may go to a household planning clinic, which supplies contraception at little to no value, however solely clinics funded through the federal Title X program don’t require parental permission — and a federal choose in Texas ruled last month that this system violates mother and father’ rights and state and federal regulation.

As Every Body Texas, the nonprofit group that is the state’s Title X administrator, awaits steerage from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on how to proceed, it knowledgeable Texas suppliers this week to require parental consent out of precaution.

Today, household planning applications are few and far between, thanks to funding cuts by the Texas Legislature in 2011. No household planning clinic exists in Sabine County. To get to the closest one, teenagers within the area should journey to an adjoining county.

Meanwhile, Texas has one of many highest teen birth rates within the nation. And in 2020, Sabine County’s teen start charge was three times the statewide common. Nearly 7% of Sabine County teenage ladies between the ages of 15 and 19 gave start that 12 months, in contrast with about 2% statewide.

Evolving well being education requirements 

In Texas, abstinence turned the cornerstone of sex education within the mid-Nineteen Nineties when conservatives demanded sweeping changes to health textbooks, insisting sex education was an inappropriate matter for teenagers. Then-Gov. George W. Bush signed a law forcing faculty districts that supply sexual education to emphasize abstinence till marriage. The regulation allowed well being educators to talk about contraception with college students provided that they spent extra time emphasizing abstinence.

In 2009, the state eliminated well being class as a highschool commencement requirement, additional minimizing the significance of well being education. As a outcome, lower than a 3rd of Texas highschool college students took a well being class between 2016 and 2020, in accordance to an evaluation of state course enrollment information by Healthy Futures of Texas, a nonprofit that works to cut back teen pregnancies.

In 2021, state lawmakers made it even more durable for college students to find out about secure sex. Now, mother and father should give written permission earlier than their youngsters can find out about “human sexuality,” family violence, baby abuse or sex trafficking. Texas is one among solely five states within the nation, together with Nevada, Utah, Mississippi and North Carolina, to have such a requirement for sex education and the one state requiring parental permission to educate about baby abuse.

Students whose mother and father enable them to attend sex education courses are nonetheless taught that abstinence is the “preferred choice of behavior.” But, for the primary time in additional than 20 years, the Texas State Board of Education in November 2020 voted to overhaul the center faculty well being curriculum requirements. These college students ought to now find out about contraception and sexually transmitted illnesses, conversations beforehand reserved for highschool well being courses.

Keven Ellis, the Lufkin-based chair of the State Board of Education, known as the brand new necessities a “good middle ground” between complete sex education — which prioritizes correct and exhaustive information about contraception, sexual well being and sexually transmitted infections — and an abstinence-only class.

Schools have been scheduled to undertake these new requirements by August of this 12 months. But in Sabine County, in addition to many others in East Texas, colleges are sticking with an abstinence-based curriculum for center faculty college students.

Every few years, the Texas State Board of Education units requirements about what is to be included in lecturers’ lesson plans, whether or not it’s social research, math or well being. These requirements are often called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS. But no state company tracks whether or not districts make use of these requirements. Students finally take annual standardized checks on core topics like math and science, however there is no such check for well being.

“There’s no guarantee that every single TEK is taught to every single student,” Ellis mentioned. “In the state of Texas, I’m sure some TEKS get skipped over, hopefully inadvertently, but probably in this case a little less inadvertently.”

When new well being necessities for colleges come from the state capital, districts flip to their school health advisory councils to advise their native faculty boards about how to implement them. The councils, made up of fogeys and directors appointed by the native faculty boards, are there to make sure that “local community values are reflected” of their faculty districts’ well being education instruction. School boards have a tendency to hear to their options.

Inside a classroom at Hemphill High School this fall, members of the native advisory council struggled to navigate the brand new state necessities about sex education.

“Have we been able to decipher the bill yet?” Cecily Bridges, a Hemphill faculty nurse and the council’s chairperson, requested throughout the assembly. She turned to Stephen English, Hemphill Independent School District’s superintendent, for an help.

“Not really,” English replied.

“It’s hard to interpret what we’re required to do,” Hemphill Middle School principal Jeremy McDaniel interjected.

At the top of the assembly, Bridges instructed committee members to learn by means of the brand new legal guidelines and the up to date curriculum earlier than the next assembly. And she mentioned she’d attain out to the district’s education service heart for steerage.

Across the remainder of spiritual and conservative Deep East Texas, some districts are selecting not to provide sex education to center faculty college students.

“I don’t care for the school to be teaching the kid sex ed. That’s my job,” one mother or father mentioned throughout the well being advisory council assembly for Chester ISD in close by Tyler County in April. “I’ll do that.”

If a district is not complying with state requirements, the one recourse can be for a mother or father to file a criticism with the college board. But that places the accountability of monitoring district curriculums on mother and father who, in Deep East Texas, would usually choose to keep away from sex education altogether.

In Hemphill, a city of lower than 1,000 individuals, church buildings outnumber medical clinics. Wednesday evening church companies are a part of the weekly rhythm. And faith has lengthy been entangled in debates about sex education.

Some mother and father on this area clam up when the phrases “sex education” come up, mentioned well being educator Ashley Cook. She’s making an attempt to get into the Hemphill colleges to educate college students about baby abuse, teen relationship violence and sex trafficking as a part of her Lufkin-based nonprofit, Harold’s House.

But even Cook has to reassure faculty officers and mother and father that she’s going to stick to euphemisms like “private parts,” even for center and highschool college students.

“I don’t say the biological terms,” Cook mentioned. “The schools are a little concerned about that, so I’m careful about how I use my language.”

Inconsistent sex education 

Because sex education is voluntary, it’s not clear what Texas college students find out about sex and contraception. According to a 2016 survey, 58% of Texas faculty districts educate abstinence-only sex education whereas 17% educate an abstinence-plus curriculum that features information about contraception. The remaining 25% educate no sex education in any respect.

Tenaha ISD in Shelby County — about 50 miles north of Hemphill — invited nonprofit Excellent Teen Choice to ship abstinence-based classes to college students.

On a Friday morning in November, Excellent Teen Choice educator Eric Love, 47, launched into a category about sexually transmitted illnesses as he stood earlier than tenth graders at Tenaha High School.

“Did anybody know you could have sex and catch a disease? Isn’t that cool?” Love mentioned sarcastically, his eyes extensive and fingers gesticulating wildly.

For 45 minutes, the high-energy teacher enthusiastically instructed college students concerning the indicators and signs of infections like gonorrhea, HPV and chlamydia. Students adopted alongside in workbooks.

To show how extensively the illnesses can unfold, college students ran across the room accumulating as many signatures as they might on index playing cards. Love then defined that every signature represented somebody that they had sex with.

Two college students, unbeknownst to them, had tiny X’s printed on the corners of their notecards. That X, Love mentioned, meant the coed had a sexually transmitted illness.

“It’s living in their body and they’ve been transmitting the STD to other people, and they just don’t know it,” Love mentioned.

He then had the 2 “infected” college students stand on the entrance of the room and learn the names on their playing cards. Now these college students have been contaminated, too, Love defined.

“I need you guys to understand the way this happened,” Love mentioned. “Although this is a game, it’s not a game in real life.”

Love understood this personally. His half-sister turned pregnant when she was in highschool, an expertise that impressed Love to educate younger individuals concerning the penalties of premarital sex.

As college students returned to their desks, Love flashed photos on a display on the entrance of the room. One confirmed pus-filled bumps on a male penis that made some college students’ jaws drop. Another pictured an contaminated cervix, the slender passageway between a lady’s vagina and her uterus. A pupil cocked his head and remarked that the fallopian tubes resembled frozen Tyson hen wings.

Before college students went on to their next courses, Love returned to his fundamental level: abstinence. “It is our hope, our aim that you all will listen to this message: The best decision for your health, for your life, for your children’s lives is to save sex until marriage.”

Ninth grader Jasmine Santos mentioned she was ignorant about STDs earlier than the lesson.

“Now that I understand what can happen, I’ll probably say no [to sex] until marriage,” she mentioned.

Studies show abstinence-only sex education or no sex education in any respect correlates with excessive teen start charges. Medical specialists, in the meantime, have championed complete sex education.

When Brittany Henson, 33, attended Hemphill High School, she and her mom by no means talked about secure sex. The faculty district wasn’t educating sex education, both. The gaps in her sex education have been a byproduct of how little the city and the neighborhood had mentioned the topic, Henson mentioned.

“That is the culture of Hemphill. It is ‘Let’s not talk about it. It’s not a problem,’” mentioned Henson, whose household has lived and labored on this city for generations. “People feel like it’s so wrong to talk about it. And like if you talk about it, ‘Oh, let me grab my shirt and button it all the way up to my neck because you shouldn’t be talking about these things.’”

Without formal sex education, Henson turned to different college students. Their information was usually incorrect.

“So, result? Hey, you got a baby,” she mentioned.

Henson was in her junior 12 months of highschool when she obtained pregnant. She was on contraception however wasn’t taking her capsules constantly and didn’t know that may elevate her threat of being pregnant. She was, under no circumstances, an anomaly. Five different ladies in her highschool class additionally obtained pregnant earlier than commencement, she mentioned.

Contraception entry

Over the years, Valerie Polk has gotten very snug with subterfuge. Polk works on the solely clinic within the area that has traditionally been ready to prescribe contraception with out parental consent, and she’s had to discover artistic methods to assist younger individuals shield themselves.

She’s met college students off the freeway, on the publish workplace, on the bleachers throughout a highschool soccer recreation and within the checkout line on the native Brookshire Brothers.

Once, in 2017, Polk wrapped contraceptive capsules inside a Walmart bag and slipped the bag to a teen cashier on the native grocery retailer. The cashier laughed at Polk’s stagecraft earlier than accepting the bag and placing it out of sight.

Valerie Polk, a public well being employee on the Jasper Newton County Public Health District, describes the challenges of getting contraception to sufferers in a rural space.

“We do what we have to do to get our patients taken care of,” Polk mentioned.

Polk has labored on the Jasper Newton County Public Health District for greater than 25 years, offering well being companies to residents in Jasper and Newton counties in addition to different close by areas, together with Sabine County.

The Jasper Newton County Public Health District is a federal Title X well being care supplier, one among 156 such clinics within the state. That has allowed Polk to give anybody contraception, freed from cost. The Title X program has been one of many solely methods minors in Texas can entry contraception with out parental consent. But final month, a Trump-appointed federal choose in Texas ruled that Title X violates mother and father’ rights and state and federal regulation.

Legal proceedings are ongoing, however the state’s Title X administrator has instructed Title X clinics to cease giving out contraception to minor sufferers with out proof of consent for now. The ruling has left Polk and her crew in a bind. Starting this week, they now started requiring parental consent.

“This isn’t somewhere we’ve been before — where we really can’t help someone,” Polk mentioned. “This is a new era for us. I just hope the ruling is overturned sooner rather than later.”

Already, over the previous decade, the variety of Title X clinics within the area has fallen, additional impeding sexually lively youngsters who need to keep away from changing into pregnant. In 2011, there have been 4 federally funded clinics in Deep East Texas. That quantity has been sliced in half, with simply two clinics inside a 100-mile radius of Sabine County. The Jasper Newton County Public Health District runs each these clinics — with one in Jasper and the opposite in Newton.

In Lufkin, a well being care hub about 50 miles away from Sabine County, the Angelina County and Cities Health District suspended its contract with Title X in 2021, citing onerous necessities and paperwork. While the well being district nonetheless supplies contraception, teenagers have to be 15 or older and have parental consent to obtain it.

In 2011, in an effort to cease state {dollars} from flowing to Planned Parenthood’s well being care clinics, Texas legislators cut funding for family planning services by two-thirds — from $111 million to $37.9 million for the 2012-13 finances. Within three years, more than 80 clinics throughout the state shuttered, together with people who have been by no means affiliated with Planned Parenthood.

Some of the clinics that closed have been additionally Title X suppliers. Every Body Texas, which has administered the state’s Title X funds since 2013, has tried to rebuild the community of household planning companies. But restarting companies brings up a bunch of challenges.

“It’s a lot easier to close. It’s a lot harder to reopen a clinic,” mentioned Stephanie LeBleu, the group’s appearing deputy Title X undertaking director. “We still see the legacy of that choice to cut family planning funding throughout the state.”

The Title X program has confronted its personal politically motivated assaults lately. Under the Trump administration, clinics that supplied abortions or made abortion referrals have been disqualified from this system.

Adding to the obstacles to contraception entry, the kids Polk desires to serve don’t even appear to know that Title X exists. Some teenagers who need contraception don’t know the place to go for it. Few have formally been taught about sex. Those who’ve have been instructed to abstain.

“The Bible Belt says, ‘No, we’re not going to talk to our kids about birth control,’” Polk mentioned. “‘We’re not going to talk about premarital sex.’”

English, the Hemphill faculty superintendent, mentioned contraception was not coated within the district’s sex education curriculum and he doubted college students may entry it in the event that they wished to.

Polk and her crew have tried to get into the general public colleges to educate college students about their choices for contraception. But that’s been practically impossible, she mentioned.

Polk particulars a few of the obstacles to educating highschool college students about contraception.

“It may not be the superintendent, it could be the school board. It could be some parents that are going, ‘Oh, no, you’re going to tell my child about sex,’” Polk mentioned.

What college students do be taught, Polk mentioned, is usually inaccurate information that comes from social media platforms like Snapchat or TikTook.

So Polk and her crew do what they will to make themselves identified of their neighborhood to handle the misinformation. Outside of labor, they put on well being district T-shirts to elevate its visibility. And when youngsters are available for appointments, Polk asks them to inform all their buddies about their companies.

Some docs are additionally filling the hole left in education and entry. George Fidone, a Lufkin pediatrician, mentioned he speaks overtly about sex together with his adolescent sufferers and prescribes contraception on a weekly foundation — however solely with parental permission.

“I’ve had too many kids come in with their parents, and the parents think they’re coming in for a sore throat,” Fidone mentioned. “And the kid will give me a look. And I’ll know that look is ‘I’m pregnant, and I need help with this.’”

Another factor that retains teenagers from accessing contraception is that Texas is one among simply two states that don’t cowl contraception by means of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the insurance coverage plan for low-income households. Also, state-funded household planning clinics require parental consent earlier than minors can get contraception. Even a teen who has had a child can not get hold of contraception with out parental consent.

Teen being pregnant

When Henson was a junior in highschool, she purchased an at-home being pregnant check from the native greenback retailer and took the check in her mother and father’ lavatory.

But after the 2 pink faint strains emerged, signaling she was pregnant, she didn’t name her mom. She didn’t name her older siblings who had already left house.

Instead, she initially stored quiet about her being pregnant. She took herself to and from docs’ appointments. She continued to make straight A’s and work her job as a cashier at Brookshire Brothers. She mentioned she even competed within the state monitor meet whereas 5 months pregnant.

“I just didn’t want to deal with the disappointment. … I wasn’t ready for that,” mentioned Henson, who was an all-star athlete and a straight-A pupil. “I felt like I had the weight of not only my family, but the weight of my community.”

Hemphill and West Sabine faculty districts work with pregnant college students to present lodging to get them to commencement, together with homebound companies late within the being pregnant. But teen mothers are much less probably to end highschool. Just over half of 20- to 29-year-old girls who have been teen mothers have highschool diplomas, in accordance to a 2018 report from Child Trends.

But after Henson gave start to her daughter, she stored a agency grip on her goals. She drove straight from the Jasper Memorial Hospital supply room to the college athletics workplace to rejoin the college basketball crew. She would go on to graduate highschool on time and attend Sam Houston State University on a monitor scholarship.

Henson now lives in Hemphill. She’s labored as a nurse on the Sabine County Hospital. Her daughter, Bremyiah, now 16, attends the identical highschool she did.

Bremyiah is relationship now, however Henson says she feels OK about it. She fiddles with a silver ring on her finger, emblazoned with the phrase “Mom” in cursive. She hopes she’s given her daughter the information to make the precise selections.

The mom and daughter speak about secure sex and contraception. Bremyiah doesn’t need to get on contraception, however Henson hopes her daughter can come to her if she modifies her thoughts.

Last 12 months, Henson drove Bremyiah to the gynecologist for the primary time, an appointment the place her daughter may get primary reproductive information from a physician.

“What am I going here for?” Bremyiah requested as they have been preparing. “I’m not having a baby.”

“That’s the point. It’s to keep you from having a baby,” Henson mentioned. “We gotta learn, we gotta learn.”

Reporter Eleanor Klibanoff, video journalist Jinitzail Hernández and information visualization fellow Caroline Covington contributed to this story.

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood, Sam Houston State University and Walmart Stores Inc. have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that is funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Find an entire list of them here.