DC schools use sex ed curriculum that avoids using ‘male,’ ‘female,’ promotes abortion

By Tate Rosentreter
The Center Square

An education defense group is exposing what it says is the District of Columbia Public Schools “extreme” and “inappropriate” sexual education curriculum, where the terms male and female are avoided for elementary students and abortion is promoted as an option for pregnancy to high schoolers.

Senior Director of Communications for education defense group Defending Education Erika Sanzi told The Center Square that the District of Columbia Public Schools’ (DCPS) lessons “aren’t just inappropriate for children but they reveal that DCPS has embraced an ideology so extreme that it avoids using words like male and female and man and woman when teaching about reproduction and sexual anatomy.”

“The fact that students can’t be opted out of this madness just adds insult to injury,” Sanzi said.

DCPS uses the Rights, Respect, Responsibility (3Rs) curriculum for its sexual safety lessons, with such lessons being impossible for students to opt out of by DC law, according to DCPS’ website.

DCPS has not yet responded to The Center Square’s request for comment.

According to documents obtained by Defending Education, a fifth grade lesson plan in the 3Rs curriculum refers to the male reproductive system as “Person with a Penis” or “Body with Penis and Testicles,” while the female reproductive system is likewise referred to as “Person with a Uterus” or “Body with a Vulva.”

A note to the teacher in the lesson plan reads: “It is likely that students will see the body parts and refer to this as the ‘boy’ or ‘male’ system, and the system of a person with a uterus as the ‘girl’ or ‘female’ system. Ideally, you should point out that you know that each person’s body can be different than the gender they know they are.”

The note encourages teachers to “use the more inclusive language of ‘person with a penis’ and ‘person with a uterus.”

The goal of this fifth grade lesson is for students to “correctly name at least two parts of the two sexual and reproductive systems,” as well as functions of those parts.

3R lesson plans for seventh graders on reproductive systems include a note on language stating that the usage of “male” and “female” in reference to anatomy in the lesson is “for clarity’s sake to refer to biological sex or the sex a person was assigned at birth based on their anatomy (for example, a baby born with a vulva is likely to be called a ‘girl’).”

“At the same time, however, it is important to avoid assuming that all of your students’ gender identities will match their sexual anatomy,” the note continues. “Referring to people with particular body parts (such as ‘a person with a vulva’) will create a more inclusive classroom than ‘female anatomy.’”

A 9th grade 3R lesson plan teaches teens that there are three options when a “person” becomes pregnant: becoming a parent, adoption, or abortion.

The abortion pill is also promoted in the lesson, as students are taught that “up to 49 days or 7 weeks” a “pregnant person” can have an abortion “by taking medication.”

“After 49 days or 7 weeks, they need to go to a doctor or clinician,” the lesson says.

Additionally, part of the students’ homework includes visiting Planned Parenthood websites.

According to Defending Education’s report, DCPS offers “resources from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance (now Learning for Justice) and Gender Spectrum.”

In April, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was indicted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on “11 counts of wire and bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, The Center Square reported.

Recently, the DOJ issued a superseding indictment containing “new allegations that the [SPLC] used donations to fund hate groups.

The 3Rs curriculum is by Advocates for Youth, a group that, according to Defending Education, “often partners with Planned Parenthood on programming and initiatives such as the Future of Sex Education (FoSE).”