Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The sex-ed question

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Anne, and I work at a Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania.
My question is, we here at Planned Parenthood support comprehensive sex education and I'd like to know if any of you as candidates have talked to your children about sex and used medically accurate and age-appropriate information?

COOPER: Senator Edwards?
EDWARDS: Well, Elizabeth and I have had sort of an unusual experience for parents, because Elizabeth likes to say that was made a member of AARP when she was pregnant with Jack, our last child.
We have had four children. Our two youngest children are now nine and seven. So we have been through the whole experience, including kids who have grown up.
Yes, the answer is we have taught our younger children when they were young how to look for the signs of wrong touching, any kind of what would be sexual abuse, inappropriate touching. And we have taught our children as they got older, all -- I think, using medically appropriate terms -- all that they needed to know to be properly educated.

COOPER: Senator Obama, Mitt Romney has accused you this week of saying that 5-year-old children should be getting sex education. Was he right?
OBAMA: Ironically, this was actually a proposal that he himself said he supported when he was running for governor of Massachusetts. Apparently, he forgot.
And it makes the exact point that John made. I've got a 9-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old daughter. And I want them to know if somebody is doing something wrong to them, encroaching on their privacy, that they should come talk to me or my wife.
And we've had that conversation, but not every parent is going to have that conversation with their child, and I think it's important that every child does, to make sure that they're not subject to the sexual predators.

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