It’s spring where I live. Flowers are blooming. Trees are blossoming. And here I am, writing a blog post during a pleasant, springtime #SexEdforAll month at the very moment that the Alabama state legislature and governor have enacted the least pro-choice state law in the nation. It feels like a #NoSexforAnyone Nor’easter has blown through and shook off all the fragile flower petals.

Alabama is just one of several states with legislatures racing to the bottom to lay claim to having the most-restrictive abortion laws among the states. Up to 99-year prison terms for health care providers that perform abortion, as provided in the Alabama law, does appear to be the low bar. (See The Guttmacher Institute for tracking and analysis of state abortion-related legislation and laws.)

Increasing legal restrictions on providers, patients, and their families to provide and obtain full reproductive medical care is just one branch of a sex-negative winter tree. Also sprouted from this barren tree are gnarled limbs like efforts to allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide full reproductive medical care due to the provider’s religious beliefs, restricting Planned Parenthood health centers from participating in publicly-funded healthcare programs, and requiring schools to stress abstinence in their sex education curricula.

Notice all the negative words associated with these public policies: “restrict,” “refuse,” “abstain.”

Goodness gracious… how deficit-based can this public policy architecture and its proponents be?!

Alas, I prefer spring to winter. So, I’m not going to let Alabama activate my seasonal affective disorder.

Rather, I am going to invite policymakers leading the dreary sex-negative public policy devolution of wintertime—and the voters who elect them—to clean out their closets, open their windows, and embrace the fresh, springtime sex-positive public policy revolution!

While far from an exhaustive list, this sex-positive public policy revolution includes:

At the national level—

• Continuing funding for positive adolescent sexual health programs such as the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program and the school health activities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, both of which are slated for increases in the U.S. House of Representatives appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
• Passing the just-introduced Real Education for Healthy Youth Act (REHYA).
• Passing the just-introduced Youth Access to Sexual Health Services Act (YASHS).
• Increasing funding for the Title X family planning program (also slated for an increase in the House appropriations bill), and letting that program do its purpose without hamstringing health centers and providers.
• Reauthorizing the Pregnancy Assistance Fund and the Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools (CCAMPIS) programs, so students who choose to be parents can complete their educations while also assuring their children’s healthy development.

At the state level—

• Supporting positive sex education bills being considered in state legislatures, and introducing similar bills in states that do not currently have affirming sex education laws.

At the local level—

• Learning about your local school districts’ sex education curricula and school sexual health practices and advocating with district leadership for change if those policies and practices are negative for students.

(For what it’s worth, supporting the public policy recommendations above does not prevent one from continuing to hold a firmly held belief against abortion, since NONE of these proposed public policy positions require anyone to obtain an abortion…choice is positive after all!)

Well, what do you know, I’ve just painted a landscape featuring a mighty, robust, healthy, life-affirming sex-positive tree.

We can imagine, can’t we? We can most definitely plant seeds.

It’s spring where I live.