When the Legislature passes a law, you expect the state to follow it. Idaho standards and law require that sex education in public schools must teach abstinence. 

Seems simple, right?

Unfortunately, Idaho law has also given local school boards authority to decide how kids will learn about abstinence in sexuality education, a loophole that Planned Parenthood and affiliates have exploited with the aid of the federal government. 

In true George Orwell fashion, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates redefined the word “abstinence.” Abstinence, under their new definition, becomes consistent with gay sex, rear entry sex, oral sex, obscenity, mutual masturbation, reproductive rights, sexual orientation, gender transitioning, and other practices. What sounds like “wait for marriage” ends up as “taking puberty blockers” and genital mutilation. Ultimately, these abstinence programs even advocate for having sex, as long as condoms are used or abortion is available. 

This program was implemented by the Dept. of Health and Welfare and public health districts throughout the state to install the Planned Parenthood-endorsed “Reducing the Risk” curriculum in our public schools.

Parents who objected to this curriculum as being “pornographic” were told by public officials and members of the media that this curriculum taught “abstinence-only” education and was “medically accurate.” However, our research proved the curriculum did not teach traditional abstinence, and the special understanding of “medically accurate” determined through the TPP Evidence Review is more political than scientific. Of the over 600 studies evaluated under TPP Evidence Review, only 24 of them were approved for use in schools; and Planned Parenthood endorsed or created 17 of them.

IFF evaluated the big four federal grant programs governing this sex education in Idaho and across the country. Our researchers found that Planned Parenthood is dominating the grant-making process. These four programs collectively dispensed $228 million through 243 grants between 2020-2023. 

Planned Parenthood and its affiliates won about $167 million or 80 percent of all sex education grant money between 2020-2023. As a result, radical gender ideology is infiltrating public schools across the country. Even in Idaho. 

We called on policymakers to reject the funding of the federal government and the corrupt values that go along with it.

Based on that research, the Legislature stepped up. First, it eliminated more than half a million dollars worth of federal grant money that was supporting the “Reducing the Risk” program in our public schools. Then on Friday morning, the Senate passed a law clarifying the definition of abstinence to mean abstaining from sex prior to marriage. The bill is on its way to the governor’s desk as we write this.

We will continue to keep watchful eyes on the taxpayer-funded agencies that seek to subvert the will of the Legislature and of the people in service to their ideological crusades.