Know Your IX is focused on ensuring students know their rights under the federal anti–gender discrimination law, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and improving and advocating for improvements to that law to help students. The organization made a name for itself in pushing the Obama administration to ratchet up enforcement of the law and fighting with the Trump administration over its rewrite of Title IX regulations. More recently, the group has been part of a coalition calling on the Biden administration to release its overhaul of the Title IX rules.

The renewed push for on-campus access coincided with the start of a weeklong national campaign known as Abortion on Campus Week of Action. From Oct. 23 to Oct. 27, students from more than 150 campuses across the country will take part in the campaign, according to an Instagram post by Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on reproductive justice topics.

One of maude’s main brand initiatives includes supporting inclusive sexual health and education for all people. As I’ve learned, sexual education is essential to supporting healthy sexual health practices later in life. I made it a goal to teach myself in college, but many people end up going through life without adequate sexual health education or a desire to learn. Some of the organizations maude partners with include Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) and Advocates for Youth and Peer Health Exchange. These organizations advocate for reproductive freedom and legislative change when it comes to better sex education in schools.

Trump-era rules changed the types of harm that universities are required to investigate. Students living or working off campus often have no real means of reporting abuse and harassment.

Davis was one of seven student organizers with Know Your IX, a survivor- and youth-led project of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit, who made the journey to Washington, D.C., for a five-day Youth Activism Institute that culminated with students meeting with lawmakers and Biden administration officials. At the Education Department, Davis and the other organizers met with Sam Ames, chief of staff at the Office for Civil Rights, for about 30 minutes on Monday. Following the meeting, they said they felt heard and appreciated the chance to share their frustrations with the process of issuing new Title IX regulations

When we asked Emma Levine from the Title IX advocacy organization Know Your IX if students felt safe going to the Title IX office to report an assault, their answer was absolute: “No, definitely not.”

Last year, a Know Your IX organizer and co-author of the 2021 study told Jezebel about a student whose assailant was expelled from her university—only for him to file a defamation lawsuit that allowed him to “access her medical records, school records, even her sexual history,” forcing her to transfer schools, delay her graduation, and spend over $100,000.

“In 2011, I proudly told my abortion story for the first time publicly via Advocates for Youth’s “1 in 3” story-telling project because I was inspired by the project to show so many faces and reasons behind abortion. “I now lead a national abortion access organization, knowing that I, along with so many, contain multitudes. Abortion, birth and miscarriage are all a part of my life story. I am proud to talk about and advocate for support for all pregnancy options unequivocally without shame or judgment but with love and compassion.”

More and more people are ending unwanted pregnancies at home with abortion pills — the combination of two FDA-approved drugs called mifepristone and misoprostol or misoprostol alone. Access to abortion pills has expanded rapidly since the pandemic because of the rise of online pharmacies in the U.S. and international websites that ship abortion pills to your home. Women who choose to self-manage abortions outside of a health care setting can access resources like the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline for medical support or the Repro Legal Helpline for legal advice.

Kejriwal prepared a presentation, complete with testimonials, about the bill and the importance of comprehensive sexuality education. The 17-year-old Georgian said that she only briefly received sex ed instruction in fifth grade and middle school. In Georgia, schools offer sex education and AIDS prevention education, but the curriculum does not have to meet the National Sex Education Standards developed by the Future of Sex Education (FoSE) Initiative, a partnership between sexual health nonprofits Advocates for Youth, Answer, and SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change.

V chats with advocates who are pushing for evidence-based, comprehensive, and inclusive sex education in schools. V asks 18-year-old Aspen Schenker how they’re breaking down misconceptions about sexual health and helping their peers stay safe. Then, Advocates for Youth Director of Training Brittany McBride and physician Jennifer Cowart weigh in on the important life skills sex ed teaches. We’ll learn about why these courses allow students to confidently transition into adulthood and how to get comfortable having uncomfortable but vital conversations with people in your life.

In 2018, the Muslim Youth Leadership Council, an initiative of the nonprofit Advocates for Youth, put out a brochure called “I’m Muslim and I Might Not Be Straight: A Resource for LGBTQ+ Muslim Youth,” addressing various topics, including coming out to family (and whether doing so is necessary in the first place), consent and emotional readiness, and whether it is possible to be queer and Muslim at the same time. It also contains numerous quotes from LGTBQ Muslim young people sharing their stories. “As a 20-year-old queer, nonbinary, hijabi Muslim,” writes Fatimah, age 20, “my identity is complex. My parents often say that there aren’t any LGBTQ people in our community. My mosque often says that you cannot be LGBTQ and a Muslim. The government often says that me and my family aren’t welcome in this country in the first place. What I’ve come to understand is that queer Muslims have existed since the beginning of Islam. We exist. And Allah made us just the way we are.”

According to Advocates for Youth, an organization that advocates for comprehensive sex education, prevention is the most crucial element of HIV advocacy. Many southern states do not require HIV and AIDS education in schools, and some states that require HIV education in the sex education curriculum will not require the lessons to be medically accurate.

I was curious to know some of the biggest misconceptions adults have around kids and what they want to know about sex. Victoria Ogunleye, Digital Sex Education Manager for Amaze, explained that one common misconception is kids don’t want to hear about sex from their parents. “Young people actually crave that open and honest dialogue with their parents or trusted adults,” they shared.

Several advocacy groups applauded the FDA’s decision including Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit devoted to reproductive health rights. The organization says the price of the pill may be too expensive for some but they will now work with insurance companies to consider covering the cost. At the time of this writing, it is unknown how much Opill will cost at pharmacies. The Biden administration said the manufacturer, Perrigo, will set the price.

My parents did not let me go on the pill,” Huitron said in a recent interview. “There was just a lot of cultural stigma around being sexually active before you’re married.” While she uses other forms of contraception, “I would have much preferred to have birth control and use these additional methods to ensure that I was being as safe as possible.” Huitron spoke on behalf of Advocates for Youth, one of the dozens of groups that have pushed to make prescription contraceptives more accessible.

“Young people absolutely need this,” said 19-year-old Dyvia Huitron, a member of Advocates for Youth which champions contraception accessibility. “For them to be able to get something so important in terms of taking care of their bodies, at an age when historically we have not been allowed to … it will have a really significant impact on our lives and our ability to plan for the future.”

The FDA’s decision came after Huitron and five other young people involved with the #FreethePill Youth Council, a group focused on making oral contraception available without a prescription for Americans of all ages, brought together by the sexual advocacy organization Advocates for Youth, testified to an FDA advisory committee in May, painting a powerful picture of how over-the-counter birth control would make a tangible impact on the lives of many young Americans.

The FDA decision was lauded by several medical and advocacy groups on Thursday, including Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organisation pushing for reproductive health rights, which called the approval "long overdue". The group says the price of the pill remains a concern, especially for young people. The organisation plans to advocate for insurance companies to consider covering the over-the-counter purchases.

"I'm thrilled the FDA followed the science and the unanimous decision of its advisory committee and has authorized Opill for sale over the counter," said Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth and a member of the Free the Pill steering committee. "Having an OTC option for birth control pills is incredibly important and long overdue. We know that the far right will continue to attack and limit access to reproductive health care, and we need to ensure young people have everything they need to lead healthy lives and plan their futures."

“This monumental moment of over-the-counter approval gives thousands of young people across the United States access to a vital piece of health care,” Dyvia Huitron, a 19-year-old organizer with Advocates for Youth, said in a statement responding to the FDA’s approval. “I am so glad to know that I, and many others, can now take charge of our health and pick up birth control on our own terms and in our own time.”

“Young people absolutely need this,” said Huitron, a member of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organization that has been pressing for easier access to birth control. “For them to be able to get something so important in terms of taking care of their bodies, at an age when historically we have not been allowed to … it will have a really significant impact on our lives and our ability to plan for the future.”

Advocates for Youth organizer Dyvia Huitron called the approval “monumental.” Huitron testified to the FDA panel in May about the importance of accessing contraception as a young person. “I am so glad to know that I, and many others, can now take charge of our health and pick up birth control on our own terms and in our own time,” Huitron said in a statement to Jezebel on Thursday.

Below is a video posted by HIV.gov about National HIV Testing Day. It features Kayla Quimbley, an Advocates for Youth activist, National Youth HIV/AIDS Ambassador and member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

Data from Advocates for Youth shows that the majority of young people across the country face barriers to accessing birth control that leads to delayed doses, side effects and an inability to use contraception. Of the individuals from the 42 states surveyed, an overwhelming majority of 88% indicate that they struggled to access birth control, and 55% experienced multitudes of barriers that prevented them from starting birth control on their preferred timeline.

National HIV Testing Day highlights a part of one’s self-care routine that might be overlooked, added Kayla Quimbley, Advocates for Youth Activist, National Youth HIV/AIDS Ambassador, and member of PACHA. “Knowing your HIV status can empower you with the knowledge to make informed decisions about your sexual and overall health,” she said.

“Being queer does not negate your Islam, and it certainly doesn’t negate the efforts you make while trying to be a better Muslim,” she tells Yahoo Life. “The longer I know other queer Muslims, the more I'm willing to believe that than I think I ever have on my own.” Her search for community ultimately led her to Muslim Youth Leadership Council (MyLC), a group of Muslim youth from across the country working for queer rights, funded by the organization Advocates for Youth and for which she's now an ambassador alongside Amal Iman, a 23-year-old living in New York City (going by a pseudonym for this story).

"This groundbreaking legislation creates a roadmap to ensure that abortion care is available without hurdles or stigma for people of color working to make ends meet, young people, LGBTQ, and gender nonconforming people – and is accessible in the communities where we live," the group Advocates for Youth said in a statement.

Advocates for Youth, a group that helps young people promote sexual health and equity, saw membership in its newly created Youth Abortion Support Collective boom since launching in 2020. The group is a network of young people who are experts on abortion resources and options. The roughly 100 to 150 original members now number over 1,000, according to Tamara Marzouk, the director of Abortion Access at Advocates for Youth. “This is a moment where we’re seeing that young people are angry,” she said. “And they’re also catalyzed to act.”

“I really do feel like our public schools are failing kids when it comes to sex education,” said Nora Gelperin, the director of sex education and training at Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that works for adolescent sexual and reproductive health.

In the midst of these devastating challenges impacting LGBTQ youth, we spoke with Victoria Ogunleye, Digital Sex Education Manager with AMAZE.org at Advocates for Youth, about what can be done to support LGBTQ students. AMAZE.org is an initiative of Advocates for Youth, that offers a free, video-based sexual health resource that uses short, animated videos to educate young people with honest, accurate sexual health information. These videos are created for youth to help answer questions that they may not be able to find answers to from school or from their parents. AMAZE.org ensures that their content reflects the needs of youth by involving youth from the start. Their youth ambassador committee includes 28 youth ages 10-16 who contribute by informing them on what topics they are interested in and reviewing new content.

Emergency contraception vending machines have been installed at more than three dozen college campuses since the group was founded in 2019, Axios reported. The group is joined by other youth-led sexual health campaigns like that from Advocates for Youth, as well as student protestors rallying for reproductive justice around the country.

Prior to starting her sex education page, Sriha Srinivasan said she created TikToks for fun, a familiarity that made using this platform a natural step. Internalizing her newfound knowledge from student organizations including UCLA Sexperts and Advocates for Youth has made for new, informed content, she said. The support from these organizations facilitated her growth and foundation in the sex education field, Sriha Srinivasan added

The Body Shop is urging shoppers to show support for The Equality Act, which advocates for the protection, well-being and safety of the transgender community. From their shop, $1 from every “Out for Love” Highlighter purchased will go to Advocates for Youth, an organization that fights for better health outcomes for 2SLGBTQ+ youth, supporting their work on the Equality Act.

For the past year, I’ve been working with Advocates for Youth to make this a reality. Their #FreeThePill Youth Council is a network of young activists across the country working with our communities to bring birth control OTC, covered by insurance, with no age restriction. Young people have been organizing across the country, and we’re winning: New York Governor Kathy Hochul just signed the Birth Control Access Act into law.

For Beau Nelson, a junior at Williams College, who grew up in Florida, this year’s Pride brings a sense of unease: “I do hold a sense of vigilance, but I don't want that to stop me from being in community,” they says. “Now more than ever, I think working together, organizing, and working to support each other while resisting what feels like being suffocated is important.”

Advocates for Youth (AFY): They provide information and resources to help professionals who serve youth create a safe place for all young people.

Larada Lee-Wallace was a 19-year-old college sophomore when they had an abortion. Now state campaign manager for abortion access at the national nonprofit Advocates for Youth and based in the San Francisco Bay area, Lee-Wallace said accessing abortion care is “like the worst game of Tetris.” “There are constant barriers – taking time off, scheduling appointments, traveling, costs, finding childcare,” she said. “Some people are facing intimate partner violence and may not be able to safely leave the house for a period of time to get a surgical abortion. It’s a really complicated process for so many people. So if there is an option available that will be easier or feel more comfortable to them in getting the care they need, that should be celebrated.”

The Major Players Covered in this Report: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc., ACOG, GLSEN, California PTC, Verywell Family, PFLAG, BigTalkEducation, Advocates for Youth, Crush, Scarleteen, Siecus, Beducated

Rao said the Supreme Court’s decision last year has affected New York, even though abortion remains legal in the state. Increased demand from residents of states where abortion is now inaccessible, as well as protesters at abortion clinics, have put up more hurdles for students. “All of those barriers, including longer wait times and increased pressure on our abortion funds, really meant that we were looking to increase the access points for abortion itself across the state,” said Rao, who is an organizer with the nonprofit Advocates for Youth.

Ibis has partnered with the Amaze initiative, a project of Advocates for Youth, a global organisation advocating sexual health among youth. The Amaze initiative intends to harness the power of digital media to provide adolescents and youth globally with free access to medically accurate, age-appropriate, affirming, and honest CSE, in addition to making resources available for parents and teachers.

Free the Pill and other advocacy groups that support improving access to contraceptives rallied outside the White House on Monday in support of making Opill available over the counter

One of the organization’s main appeals for students is an on-campus delivery service called TxtDay, which allows people to order safe sex supplies, including Plan B. The contraceptives are delivered free of charge and anonymously to dorms or the student union. Each delivery includes instructions on usage. The supplies are funded by partnerships with Advocates for Youth in Washington, D.C. and other community organizations.

“More than 50 years of research and science speaks for itself on the safety and efficacy of birth control pills,” said Angela Maske, manager of Free the Pill Youth Council. “The data show that people are able to self-screen for contraindications and use the medication appropriately whether or not they’re under the supervision of a physician.”

Maske now works with Free the Pill, a coalition of advocates that's spent years dedicated entirely to increasing public access to contraception -- a goal they say is critical to people already struggling to access health care, find time off work or arrange for child care to make a doctor's appointment.

Mackenzie Flynn, also an educator with Advocates for Youth, echoed Charlotte’s resolve: “The regressive judges and politicians who want to deny the right to abortion are the same people who are fighting to criminalize the transgender community—all with the goal to roll back decades of progress towards racial and gender equity. We must work to ensure people can self-manage their abortions without fear of criminalization or imprisonment.”

Beau Nelson, a sophomore at Williams College in Massachusetts and a member of Advocates for Youth, an advocacy group, takes the pill to regulate menstrual periods and reduce pain. But Nelson can’t get the drug now because their doctor, who practices in their hometown of Sarasota, Fla., won’t renew the prescription until Nelson comes in for an appointment, and Nelson is tied up at school. When Sriha Srinivasan, a senior at the University of California at Los Angeles, told her mother she was going to join the campaign for OTC status for birth control pills, her mother was surprised to hear oral contraceptives were not available over the counter in the United States. In her mother’s native India, women could just go to the drugstore and buy them, Srinivasan said.

In April EC4EC, along with Advocates for Youth, a sexual education advocacy organization, held a Zoom training for students and advocates looking to bring emergency contraception vending machines to more campuses, attracting young people from more than a dozen states including Texas, Kentucky, Iowa, Georgia, and Louisiana (some with the most restrictive antiabortion laws) as well as reproductive-health-care-friendly states like Massachusetts, Michigan, and New York.

Munson, a UNLV graduate who majored in history, completed the NEW Leadership program in 2009. She remembers looking up to Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, the former program manager at UNLV’s NEW Leadership branch who now is vice president of policy, partnerships and organizing at the reproductive health group Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based nonprofit. “I didn’t see a lot of Asian American women at the time (and) it was fascinating to me; I was like, wow, look at Diana Rhodes in this scene, right?” Munson said. “Very few Asian American women are in this leadership scene who have been chosen for this program.”

“We really see the Biden administration releasing their rule by May as crucial to interrupt the harm that students are experiencing under the Trump administration’s Title IX regulation,” said Emma Grasso Levine, manager of Know Your IX, a survivor- and youth-led project of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that also signed the letter.

Sometimes, the stigma also comes at the doctor’s office — especially for young people at risk of HIV. “Either the providers aren’t informed about it well, or they’re not informed about why young people need to be taking it,” said Armonté Butler, who helps connect young people to sexual health resources as an associate director with Advocates for Youth.

“I was already concerned about young people in this country to begin with because of the pandemic because that is a group trauma that we're also in,” says Dr. Jaymie Campbell, MD and PHD, of Advocates for Youth. “Adults aren't even processing the pandemic, they're not processing their grief, they're not working on their trauma, so how are young people supposed to take their cues?”

“The consequences are really more dire than even most people would imagine,” Caitlin Viccora, programs manager for healthy & supportive schools at Advocates for Youth, told LGBTQ Nation. A recent CDC report on youth behavior over the past decade shows record-high levels of depression and suicide risk among teenagers in recent years. The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey reveals that more than half of LGBTQ+ students have recently experienced declining mental health and more than one in five had a suicide attempt within the past year. Queer female adolescents fared worse compared to males.

Initial LF-IAG members include: A Call To Men, Advocates For Youth, Black Voters Matter, Elmcor, Fund For Women's Equality, One Fair Wage, and Third Wave Fund, as well as former Chairperson and Commissioner of the New York City Commission on Human Rights Carmelyn P. Malalis, former Publisher of The Feminist Press Jamia Wilson, and Emerson College's Distinguished Artist in Residence, author/activist P. Carl.

“I feel like we’ve had many steps forward in many directions in a lot of ways in many places and many steps back at the same time,” said Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnership and organizing at Advocates for Youth, which advocates for bodily autonomy and sexual health for young people. “Millions of young people are not given the skills they need to make healthy decisions on their health and well-being.”

Advocates for Youth is another nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., working with young people in the country and the world fighting for sexual health, rights, and justice. The NGO has a 4-day workweek, and job opportunities can be remote, even senior positions.

Division Director for the Sex Education and Training Team at Advocates for Youth Nora Gelperin explained how many schools are turning the standards into take-home lessons for parents to teach on their own time, which weakens their effectiveness. “The policies are great, the standards are lovely, but we have to actually implement them in the classrooms.”

This teaching plan is an excellent refresher lesson on boundaries. It also boosts kids’ learning by having them share examples of different types of boundaries. It also teaches them about the need for communication regarding their boundaries in romantic relationships.

Abortion providers across the country are bracing this week for a decision expected soon out of a Texas federal court which will immediately block access nationwide to one of the two medications commonly used for medication abortions. As the anti-abortion lobby and their allies in the United States government attempt to deal yet another blow to this fundamental human right, organizers here in New York state are continuing the struggle to ensure abortions remain safe and accessible for all. On tonight’s show, we are live with Nix from Reproductive Justice Collective and Marian from NYC-DSA’s Socialist Feminist working group to discuss the upcoming decision and what it means for abortion providers and patients. We’ll also hear about their efforts to ensure abortion access in NY state and how you can get involved with this crucial struggle

Emma Grasso Levine of the national group Know Your IX – Advocates for Youth, and dozens of others like her, have been eager for a revision of a Trump-era regulation, which critics argue expanded the rights of those accused of sexual misconduct, to the detriment of their accusers.

In March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, I realized I might be pregnant. My uterus felt heavy. My period was only two days late, but something felt off. I was alone and didn’t have a ride, so I called an Uber to the nearest grocery store to buy a pregnancy test. When I got home, I hurried to the bathroom and took the test. It was positive. All of that was already a costly decision. I had set aside money for my bills and groceries that month, and as a full-time student and Medicaid recipient, I didn’t have the financial resources to pay for an abortion. In fact, the cost of a first-trimester abortion in the state of Ohio, where I live, was more than one month’s rent for my apartment. Luckily, I received financial assistance from the Abortion Fund of Ohio.

Louie Ortiz- Fonseca joins us for a conversation concerning Tennessee and Anti-Trans Bill.

“I also actually applied for something called the Condom Collective,” Smith said. “I think it's through Trojan, it's through a group called Advocates for Youth. And so I applied for that last semester and this semester and they sent me 500 free condoms. We use those.” Fowler said the Movement Peer Educators will also be holding Take Back the Night on April 13 from 5-9 p.m. in Talley Student Union. The group encourages everyone to come.

Liberal states take a very different approach. How forthright do they get in discussing sex and sexuality with teenagers? We looked at three curriculums for high school students in progressive districts: the 3Rs, created by the advocacy group Advocates for Youth; HealthSmart, created by the ETR, a nonprofit; and FLASH, from the King County health department in Washington state. Some of the content would be found in any district in America; other topics are more likely to turn up in progressive districts.

Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president for policy, partnerships, and organizing with Advocates for Youth, a sex education advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., told Newsweek, “Sex education in this country is governed by a patchwork of laws and policies at the state, district and even individual school level.” Rhodes added, "Sex ed isn't required everywhere, and from school to school, what students may learn can vary greatly. We're seeing a concerted effort in communities across the country by anti-sex-ed activists to limit or even remove comprehensive, effective sex education from schools and replace it with abstinence-only programs.”

“I feel like we’ve had many steps forward in many directions in a lot of ways in many places and many steps back at the same time,” said Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnership and organizing at Advocates for Youth, which advocates for bodily autonomy and sexual health for young people. “Millions of young people are not given the skills they need to make healthy decisions on their health and well-being.”

"Sex education in this country is governed by a patchwork of laws and policies at the state, district and even individual school level," Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president for policy, partnerships, and organizing with Advocates for Youth, a sex education advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., told Newsweek.

Advocates for Youth, an organization that advocates for abortion and contraception access and reproductive justice, among other issues, noted that parental involvement laws disproportionately affect minors from immigrant families. “[Some] states require parents and youth to provide government-issued identification either at the provider or to obtain notarized consent documentation,” officials wrote on their website. “This poses a barrier to immigrant youth with undocumented parents who fear immigration enforcement as well as to youth who are unaccompanied or whose parents have been detained or deported.”

“My wish is that the FDA and Biden administration will follow the science (as they’ve promised on so much else!) and let everyone—regardless of age, race, class, gender or sexuality—have a greater say in their reproductive journey and access to contraceptives,” said Beau Nelson, an activist with Advocates for Youth.

Click to watch HIV advocate Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, left, and American Gene Technologies’ Jeff Gavin in an episode of “The Cure Chronicles”

A backlash against comprehensive approaches to sex education is taking root across the U.S. In Appalachia, a group of sex educators is suspending public events for now after members were threatened.

Recent Barnard graduate Maya Corral, 23, a former RJC member and Advocates for Youth activist, has been advocating for access to medication abortion alongside Rao since 2020. “People assume that because we’re in New York, everyone has these really progressive politics—especially about abortion,” she says. “After talking to students and [members of the] administration, I realized that is far from the case. I’m excited to see what happens next for abortion access on our campus.”

The Food and Drug Administration has rejected two petitions on the use of the abortion pill mifepristone. On January 3, the FDA denied the request of Students for Life of America in a December 13 petition asking the FDA to reverse its recent modifications for use of the abortion pill.

“My wish is that the FDA and Biden administration will follow the science (as they’ve promised on so much else!) and let everyone—regardless of age, race, class, gender or sexuality—have a greater say in their reproductive journey and access to contraceptives.”

Lawmakers must understand these problems aren’t geographically isolated, said Armonte Butler, associate director LGBTQ+ health and rights at Advocates for Youth. “It’s very common for people to say, ‘This isn’t an issue here. We don’t have LGBTQ+ youth here.’ This data shows that this is showing up in your communities and in your state. It’s across the board.”

As a Black queer transmasculine person, Lloyd serves on the Advocates for Youth’s Racial Justice in Sex-Education Youth Advisory Council and Planned Parenthood of Michigan’s Gender Affirming Care Community Advisory Board. The Buckeye Flame spoke with this inspiring student about the relevance of being a young sex educator and how he uses his voice to make a difference.

People of color and young people are particularly disadvantaged, and the latter are sometimes refused prescriptions not for any medical reason but because of doctors’ beliefs, says Angela Maske, the strategic project manager at Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit sex education group. “There is demand amongst young people for an over-the-counter birth control pill, for improved access to contraception, so that they can make choices about their health and choose to prevent pregnancy if they are sexually active,” Maske says.

“Around the country, sex education is under attack in a concerted effort by far-right activists to ensure that only their values are taught,” explained Brittany McBride, associate director for sex education at Advocates for Youth. “Lower-income students [especially] face many obstacles to good health and positive futures, including less access to health care and less access to education generally, and that education is often less resourced than students attending schools in affluent neighborhoods.”

The event, titled “Self-Managed Abortion: Information and Destigmatization,” covered the history, science and application of two abortion drugs — misoprostol and mifepristone — based on information provided by Advocates for Youth, a non-profit organization that advocates for sexual and reproductive justice. HFC, a reproductive justice organization at Georgetown University, hosted the event.

AMAZE is a site that produces educational videos on difficult sex and reproductive health topics. The site launched in 2016, and Rachael Gibson, a psychologist and sex educator, is the site’s senior project manager. “We’ve been expanding globally,” Gibson says. “We have over 200 videos translated into different languages. We have videos specific to different countries and their needs, so our global partnerships are very important to us. And here domestically, a grand vision in a perfect world is that AMAZE is used in all schools and that all young people have comprehensive, inclusive sex ed.”

“At the surface, it is another barrier for young people to get access to PrEP,” said Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, LBGTQ health and rights director at Advocates for Youth who founded the organization’s Engaging Communities around HIV Organizing (ECHO), a collective of young people living with HIV who organize to decriminalize HIV and create content around de-stigmatizing HIV. They said they’ve worked with organizations who thought young people “should not be having sex or worrying about PrEP.” The Braidwood ruling “further reinforces that and gives that position even more power to create challenges for young people, particularly young Black and brown people, to access PrEP,” Ortiz-Foseca said.

“The fear is very real, and people are uncertain about what they can say and what they can do, especially when new laws are passed that are restrictive,” said Tamara Marzouk, the director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth. “We’ve seen students really fear even sharing accurate information with one another because they’re not sure about what might happen or how their university might respond.” Marzouk hopes that Barnard College’s new policy will begin a snowball effect for private universities and colleges to implement similar policies. A 2018 study estimated that over 300 students at California’s public universities sought medication abortion each month and found that many faced obstacles to off-campus care, including cost, travel time, and waiting for appointments.

“At Know Your IX, we continue to see discrimination, delays in schools' responses to harassment, retaliation, and harmful stereotypes interfere with student survivors' access to their civil rights and a safe educational environment. The status quo is not working for students -- especially for BIPOC survivors, LGBTQI+ survivors, and survivors with disabilities,” said Emma Grasso Levine, Title IX Policy and Program Manager at Advocates for Youth. “The passage of the SAFER Act would provide crucial protections for survivors and strengthen young people's right to an education free from discrimination and violence.”

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, college students across several states have seen a difference in what reproductive care their university plans to offer. NBC News’ Chloe Atkins reports on how one nationwide student-driven movement is helping to improve students' access to abortion and healthcare on campuses.

From November 16 to 30, The Body Shop is unveiling their Share the Love Bundle — a reusable pouch featuring four full-sized bottles of Drops of Youth Liquid Peel, Avocado Body Butter, Himalayan Charcoal Skin Clarifying Night Peel, Tea Tree Purifying Soap, and Lemon Purifying Hand Wash. The best part? For every pouch sold, $1 (up to $25,000) will be donated to Advocates for Youth, a U.S.-based organization dedicated to funding youth activists.

“Should the Court curb Section 230’s protections for algorithmic curation, online services would face extreme threats of liability for promoting lifesaving reproductive health information, otherwise criminalized by state antiabortion laws,” the group wrote in a letter co-signed by Advocates for Youth, a D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates on sexual health issues.

McBride said parents have significant influence on the implementation of sex ed in their school districts, but many opt out of these conversations. To combat this, Advocates for Youth have a blueprint for parents, caregivers, educators, and other advocates invested in ensuring quality sex ed in schools. The guideline provides sample messaging, strategies to combat misinformation, and ways to get involved. Advocates for Youth also sponsors Youth Activist Alliances, a network of youth organizers who run campaigns in support of sex education and reproductive justice initiatives in their states.

In a November 4 statement, Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that champions the reproductive and sexual health of youth, described the law as “irresponsible” and “discriminatory.” The group added that it is “deeply disturbed by the recent passage of HB 103. This bill seeks to protect police officers by creating two new, unnecessary felony offenses and subjects people with communicable diseases, such as HIV, all forms of hepatitis, influenza, chickenpox and COVID-19, to harsher penalties under the law.… The consequences of this law will be severe.”

“The fear is very real, and people are uncertain about what they can say and what they can do, especially when new laws are passed that are restrictive,” said Tamara Marzouk, the director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth. “We’ve seen students really fear even sharing accurate information with one another because they’re not sure about what might happen or how their university might respond.”

At the time of my first abortion, I was told by a beloved elder (who had received an abortion, too) that my pro-Black and pro-abortion stances could not co-exist with one another. The most unsettling aspect of the encounter was that her words and attitude were more reflective of how she felt about her own abortion. I was also saddened that a liberating moment for me was thought of as me being misaligned with my values. That event was not standalone: abortion access is oftentimes treated as an issue that is antithetical to pro-Black ideals. Furthermore, since abortion is sometimes framed as nothing but a simple “choice” and not essential health care, many Black women, who like myself, feel forced to explain why access to abortion is a racial justice issue that impacts the lives of Black people every day.

That’s why Nora Gelperin’s organization Advocates for Youth tries to counter misinformation by getting involved and creating some expert-led lessons of their own — all informed by youth advocates, who range in age from 10 to 16.

Mayari is a personal advocate for supporting the Planned Parenthood Action Fund for their work in providing resources around sexual health and protecting reproductive health. Other organizations that are helping people get access to sexual health resources include the National Center of Abortion Funds, Advocates for Youth, and SIECUS Sex Ed For Social Change.

In mid-October, Vice President Kamala Harris hosted 75 student leaders at the White House for a conversation on reproductive rights and health care access. The young adults, who hailed from colleges and universities in 33 states, discussed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and its implications.

As a person living with HIV who was born and raised in Pennsylvania, the passing of HB 103 serves as a reminder that as we get closer to ending the HIV epidemic, we have a long way to go to end HIV stigma and the criminalization of people living with HIV,” said Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, Director of LGBTQ Health & Rights with Advocates for Youth.

Dr. Rachael E. Gibson of Advocates for Youth, an advocacy group focused on sexual rights and justice, agrees, adding that “families have a fear of sex-ed” which makes it challenging to update curricula.

But providing students with comprehensive sex and puberty education helps put them on “a path to be able to be autonomous,” says Brittany McBride, associate director of sex education and training at Advocates for Youth, working for comprehensive sex education since the 1980s. “For some adults, I think that makes them very much uncomfortable,” she says. “The loss of control, the loss of the ability of being able to dictate what a person deserves to learn or to be able to deem what’s important to teach people about has always been a challenge in the education field.”

I live in the South, in the Bible Belt, and I just didn't talk about it for the longest time. But I began opening up about my story when I was diagnosed with HIV in 2020, around two years after my abortion. I started with HIV advocacy work, and then I met some friends who did abortion advocacy. People talked about it in my online advocacy group, Advocates For Youth. I realized how common abortion is. Once I started sharing my story and talking about it more, I was able to heal myself. I realized it was a hard decision for me, but it was the right decision, and that's OK. It doesn't have to be a hard decision for everyone, and that's OK, too. Everybody has their own journey.

Young people like Huitron also face special barriers to access. A recent study by Advocates for Youth, a member of the Free the Pill coalition, found that 88% of those surveyed struggled to access birth control pills, while 55% couldn’t get on birth control at all. “Young people simply do not have the health care they need,” said Angela Maske, strategic projects manager at Advocates for Youth, ​“and birth control is essential health care.”

And so I was already making TikToks for fun, just about my high school, about my life. Nobody was seeing them, but I was making them. And I started making sex ed TikToks. And my fifth video, a dance about chlamydia-- so I was known for chlamydia-- went viral. And about a year down the line, Free the Pill-- I worked with Advocates for Youth in DC-- reached out to me. And they were like, can you do a promotional video for us? Can you host an event. I was like, sure, sure. Like, this is so fun. I love doing this.

Young people with Generation Ratify and Advocates for Youth from across the country and the state are showing up to spread the word about the ERA in Nevada. Students of Professor Autoosa Kojoori at the College of Southern Nevada have volunteered in droves after she gave them extra credit to work on the ballot initiative. “They have written hundreds of handwritten postcards and marched with us. They’re doing a huge amount of work,” said Kelly.

Anya Mansur, a sophomore studying political science and a member of Advocates for Youth: In October, I had the honor of convening with campus leaders and advocates across the country to join in a roundtable discussion with Vice President Kamala Harris. We discussed how the Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, impacted a student’s ability to access safe abortion procedures and contraceptives and its impact on college campuses. I attended on behalf of Advocates for Youth (AFY), an organization that is dedicated to promoting the advocacy of young people. At AFY, I serve as a member of the Muslim Youth Leadership Council, where Muslim-identifying people, between the ages of 17-24, advocate nationally and in their local communities for LGBTQ+ rights, sexual and reproductive health and immigrant rights for Muslims everywhere.

Notes Gelperin, “Abstinence-only is well documented to be completely ineffective, denying young people access to information about contraception and STD risk reduction.” And, she adds, “Those who have taken a so-called virginity pledge were actually at a higher risk of getting an STD, because it didn’t change behaviors. So it’s not only ineffective but actually harmful — and renders LGBTQ students invisible.”

Karen has been working with El Rio Health’s Reproductive Healthcare Access Project (RHAP) since she was 17. El Rio, an Arizona healthcare provider, in conjunction with RHAP hosts free reproductive health clinics for people between the ages of 14 and 24. When a young person enters the clinic, they first see peer educators. “We see if they’re interested in birth control, we give them options,” Karen says. “It’s a space where they can talk about what they’re nervous about.” Some young people who come to the clinic are about to have their first pelvic exam and want to know what to expect.

But I was noticing there were different needs in the people I was supporting outside of the Community Based Doula Program — teens and women in their early twenties. Because I’m outspoken, people would come to my dorm room [at the University of Hawaii] and ask me questions about reproductive health care. I started providing abortion doula support to people in my dorm — it really was a grassroots beginning — and I realized there were not enough people doing this kind of work. That’s when I decided I wanted to work with young people in need of abortion and reproductive loss support in addition to doing prenatal, birth, and postpartum work, so I trained as an abortion doula with the Youth Abortion Support Collective at Advocates for Youth, which is based in Washington, DC.

Only three states (California, Washington, and Oregon) require that sex education be comprehensive. In some places, like Indiana, sexual health educators are reporting online threats and harassment over such classes. What kind of changes do teachers, parents and students want to see? WFYI's Lee Gaines, Advocates for Youth's Deb Hauser, Amplify Youth Health Collective's Heather Duvall, and Teen Health Mississippi's Josh McCawley join us for the conversation.

When campuses require that a student go off campus for care, that often means they miss school, miss assignments, have to pay for travel, have to miss jobs or internships, according to Tamara Marzouk, director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth, a non-profit that helps youth, including the RJC, organize around reproductive justice issues.

At our school, we have three primary demands: First, we’re demanding abortion pills be available at campus clinics and student health centers, which is a campaign we’ve been working for specifically at Barnard and Columbia for the past two-and-a-half years. We also want Columbia to renew the lease of the Red Balloon preschool, which provides day care and child care services to the local community. Reproductive justice isn’t just the ability to not have a child, which is obviously behind our demand for abortion access on campus, but also the ability to have a child, and a vital part of being able to parent a child is access to child care. And then the third demand is around stopping Columbia’s support for a new jail for gender-expansive folks, because abolitionist thinkers tell us no jail can be feminist.

Kinjo Kiema, Director of Organizing and Campaigns at Advocates for Youth, said, “As a Black woman, I know that shifting the narrative in ways that give us more agency and autonomy is vital to our wellbeing. This funding will allow us to continue to build out programming and organizing that is intersectional and supports the health and wellness of Black women and girls.”

Across the country, students and professionals alike had been preparing for the Supreme Court decision. When it was leaked in May, Advocates for Youth was five weeks into an abortion doula training for young people across the country who hoped to be able to support their peers before, during and after an abortion. And URGE, which stands for Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity, helps student groups nationwide learn to advocate for themselves in their state legislatures.

Advocates for Youth has been around for over 40 years, and we’re primarily known for reproductive justice and providing health and rights education. But obviously over the years our work has expanded because we can’t talk about reproductive health and rights without talking about HIV prevention and treatment and advocacy, or without talking about LGBTQ health and rights with youth. Advocates works with agencies, groups, and young people throughout the country to make sure that young people have access to affirming sex-ed and access to healthcare and treatment.

In the United States, 70% of women and 62% of men have had vaginal sex by the time they turn 18, but only 24 states require sexual education in public schools, while private schools provide none, according to Advocates for Youth. Arkansas law, specifically, does not allow schools to have a sex education course. However, the state does require abstinence to be stressed above all else as the only preventative method against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and infections, according to SIECUS.

"I don't think there's ever a strong enough reason for restricting health care and access to essential health care, which includes abortion and birth control. I understand the fear. But I don't think that any institution should be restricting access in any way," said Tamara Marzouk, director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that supports abortion rights.

"Abstinence-only sex education often uses scare tactics, which have never shown to be effective," said Nora Gelperin, M.Ed., director of sex education and training at Advocates for Youth, based in Washington, D.C. "Some of these scare tactics can include graphic images of genitals with STIs, which can often backfire since one of the most common symptoms of an STI is having no symptoms at all."

Happy World Contraception Day! Advocates for Youth released a new report indicating that the majority of young people around the country face barriers to accessing birth control—resulting in delayed doses, side effects and total inability to begin using contraception. This data arrives as the FDA considers approving the first-ever progestin-only, daily birth control pill available over-the-counter in the U.S.

Now a freshman at Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences, where he's studying gender, sexuality, and feminist studies and education, Lloyd continues his deeply important work as a sex educator. Lloyd also serves on the Advocates for Youth’s Racial Justice in Sex-Education Youth Advisory Council and Planned Parenthood of Michigan’s Gender Affirming Care Community Advisory Board. As a sex educator in his community, the work Lloyd does is not just lifesaving, it's life affirming. When asked for words of advice to other LGBTQ+ youth, Lloyd says, “Learn how to love yourself, ASAP.”

Over 100 LGBTQ+, health and religious advocacy organizations – including PrEP4All and the National Coalition of STD Directors – signed on to the letter which was sent to the Biden Administration and Congress. This letter comes at a time in which Congress has decided not to include funding for MPXV in the Continuing Resolution to fund the government into December. This decision will only hamper ongoing efforts to end MPXV at a critical moment when the outbreak can still be contained.

That’s according to a new survey from Advocates for Youth, which found that an overwhelming majority of young people, 88 percent, in most states struggled to access birth control. Fifty-five percent experienced so many barriers they were unable to start taking the drug on their preferred timeline. The results also revealed that young people — especially low-income, people of color, trans, queer and other marginalized youth — found accessing birth control to be unnecessarily difficult, with challenges to filling prescriptions and picking up the medication far from school campuses.

An Advocates for Youth study shows young people are struggling to get birth control. Veuer’s Elizabeth Keatinge has more.

“It is tremendously important to have more points of care,” said Tamara Marzouk, director of Abortion Access at Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that fosters intersectional organizing for 14- to 24-year-olds. She said clinics in abortion-friendly states are “overwhelmed” with appointments from out-of-state patients. “The more points of care we can have and the fewer students traveling off campus for care, the better,” Marzouk said.

Alexandra Brodsky is a civil rights lawyer and co-founder of Know Your IX, a student-led organization to confront gender-based violence. In recognition of her work on sexual harassment, the Ms. Foundation honored her with a Ms. Wonder Award. Brodsky’s Sexual Justice Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash has just been released as a paperback.

“This country has headed too far down a dangerous path of violence and bigotry toward LGBTQ2S+ youth,” said Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of Policy, Partnerships and organizing at Advocates for Youth, in a statement. “Every day, their very lives are endangered by our government’s choice to endorse utterly vile laws and policies. Taking PrEP access away is truly a crime—and hiding behind religion to get government support for homophobia and transphobia is as low as it gets.

Winett and Ramamurthy shared resources that are available to students outside of Northeastern, including national resources like Abortion Out Loud, a project by Advocates for Youth that compiles helpful information from across the web; and local organizations like the Resilient Sisterhood Project, a Boston-based group that helps Black women and gender non-conforming people access reproductive health care. They also said they encourage students to volunteer with organizations providing reproductive health care, gender affirming care or any other support to women and gender non-conforming people.

Youth activists have long been at the forefront of the movement for abortion rights, calling for intersectional, inclusive and equitable access. Disproportionately impacted by waiting periods and other existing abortion restrictions, young people have fought restriction after restriction through political action, protests, campaigns to end stigma and far more, even as politicians on both sides of the aisle ignored their efforts and dismissed their demands.

The Biden administration is one step closer to reversing polarizing rules about how schools and colleges should handle accusations of sexual misconduct and gender-based discrimination crafted by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

"Even though it may seem like sex education is controversial, it absolutely is not," says Nora Gelperin, director of sex education and training at Advocates for Youth — an organization that promotes access to comprehensive sex education. She says comprehensive sex ed is "always in the best interest of young people."

A statement released by Advocates for Youth, a D.C. group that organized the rally, said the youth activists participating in the rally had mounted a letter writing campaign ahead of the event in which more than 200 letters were to be sent to U.S. senators urging them to support the Equality Act.

In a sense, this is a familiar story. Pitched debate about the scope of health classes isn’t a new phenomenon, said Nora Gelperin, the director of sex education and training at Advocates for Youth, a group that works for adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Gelperin was one of the writers of the National Sex Education Standards, which Illinois has adopted. The national standards also influenced New Jersey’s guidelines.

Tamara Marzouk, director of abortion access at the nonprofit Advocates for Youth, points out that this matters even in very blue states: When campuses in places where abortion is legal provide care to students, it lightens the burden on local independent clinics—clinics that feel the pressure from out-of-state patients. It’s still to early to know how these on-campus campaigns will go, but “I’m ready to be surprised by some administrations that we assume to be anti-abortion,” Marzouk says. “We're still mostly in summer. So we're going to see student activism ramp up in the fall. And I think that that's when we'll really see how administrations respond.”

EFF joined others in opposition to the bill, including Advocates for Youth, Center for Democracy & Technology, Chamber of Progress, EducateUS, LGBT Tech, National Women’s Law Center, PEN America, and SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change. Earlier this month, Governor Henry McMaster said the bill’s restrictions on speech are “not going to see the light of day.”

The report on CPCs includes a story from WeTestify, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions. Along with peer organizations like Shout Your Abortion and Advocates for Youth’s Abortion Out Loud, WeTestify does this by investing in abortion storytellers to elevate their voices and lived expertise, particularly those who are of color, from rural communities, queer-identified, with varying abilities and citizenship statuses, and who needed support while navigating barriers to abortion care. We Testify storytellers receive storytelling, media, and anti-harassment training.

Ultimately, community based action is even more crucial. Supporting the ongoing efforts of organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Advocates for Youth is one way to do this. Supporting student-led efforts like March for Our Lives is another.

Based on a national survey of more than 1,500 unmarried minors having abortions in states without parental involvement laws, 61% of young women discussed the decision to have an abortion with at least one of their parents. But that number does not take into account the percentage of teens living in unhealthy family environments. “Parental involvement laws cannot transform these families into stable homes nor facilitate productive communications," says Advocates for Youth

Courtney Barnett is leading a forthcoming compilation titled Here and There, a project benefiting reproductive rights. Here and There collects live recordings and demos by Sleater-Kinney, Julia Jacklin, Bedouine, and more, with proceeds benefiting the National Network of Abortion Funds and Advocates for Youth. Listen to a demo of Barnett’s “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight” and see the rest of the tracklist below.

According to research by Advocates for Youth, one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime. And young women and girls account for over 40 percent of all abortions, which are more common and necessary than we’re often led to believe. Young women in college are three times more likely to experience sexual violence, and they often lack the resources needed to travel for abortion care.

Most minors do involve their parents when they need abortions — but forcing them to do so can put them in serious danger. According to the sex education nonprofit Advocates for Youth, a fifth of pregnant minors "have experienced physical abuse by a parent or other caretaker," and 30% of those who don't speak about their abortion with a parent said they "feared violence or being forced to leave home."

Since the fall of Roe, there has since been an influx of students seeking to become involved with reproductive rights, said Tamara Marzouk, director of youth abortion access at the nonprofit Advocates for Youth.

According to the non-profit Advocates for Youth, lesbian, gay, or bisexual youth are “four times more likely to attempt suicide and young people who are questioning their sexual orientation are two times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers”.

Those samples put together by Washington D.C.-based progressive non-profit, Advocates for Youth include a list of male and female genital terms, wrongly circulated as though every second grade classroom in the state would be teaching it, come fall.

News4’s Aimee Cho reports on how the decision overturning Roe v. Wade could impact students of color.

That is why we can no longer stay silent while right-wing extremists appropriate the idea and terminology of "grooming" and “pedophilia” to attack gender equity and young people’s access to necessary education, whether these attacks are used to stoke fear and panic in attempts to ban any discussions of LGBTQ+ identity from classroom discussion, leveraged in efforts to ban books or get teachers or administrators fired, or used to undermine access to necessary relationships and sexuality education.

“What’s being delivered in classrooms around the country is a patchwork of policy and practice,” said Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnerships and organizing for Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that promotes adolescent sexual health programs and policies. “All 50 states have varying different sex education requirements, if at all, and much of that power is then given to local school districts that also vary from district to district.”

In the U.S., there were also posters and signage outside of cafes and on building walls along popular Pride parade routes advocating for the passing of the Equality Act and a dedicated landing hub that will provide education and a petition for its charitable partners, It Gets Better Canada and Advocates for Youth in the U.S.

Student organizer Nina Giddens, who is studying public health with a double concentration in prelaw and international affairs at Xavier University of Louisiana, says restrictions on abortion could make what was already a difficult decision even harder.“I have this fear of what could happen,” said Giddens, 21. She also noted that, “A lot of our push around reproductive justice has been student-led.”

Nora Gelperin has designed sex ed curricula with the organization Advocates for Youth. She says these comprehensive sex ed lessons should start as early as kindergarten. And there are lots of ways to make them fun and age-appropriate. She loves using hula hoops to teach bodily autonomy.

Advocates for Youth, an organization that advocates for abortion and contraception access, reproductive justice and LGBTQ rights and health, among other issues, noted that parental involvement laws disproportionately affect minors from immigrant families. “[Some] states require parents and youth to provide government-issued identification either at the provider or to obtain notarized consent documentation,” officials wrote on their website. “This poses a barrier to immigrant youth with undocumented parents who fear immigration enforcement as well as to youth who are unaccompanied or whose parents have been detained or deported.”

Hear from Advocate's organizer and intern, Larada Lee-Wallace on NPR's "Its Been A Minute" podcast. The Supreme Court gutted abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade. For those who have been in the trenches of the reproductive justice movement — people who saw this coming — is there anything left to feel hopeful about? Guest host B.A. Parker chats with four young organizers about their stories and their plans for the future.

AMAZE youth ambassador Jorge Martinez writes, "Today, an unprecedented amount of anti-LGBTQ laws are flooding state legislatures across the country. One after the other, conservative states are rushing to ban trans youth from participating in sports, ban comprehensive sex education in schools, undermine longstanding & federally-backed non-discrimination policies, and prevent gender-affirming medical care. On a national scale, LGBTQ youth are now having to determine for themselves whether our authenticity is worth risking our security."

We love Advocates for Youth, which advocates for access to safe contraceptives, racial justice, honest sexual education, LGBTQ+ rights, support for sexual assault survivor, abortion access, and much more, particularly as it pertains to adolescents and young adults. In addition to advocating for changes in policy, the organization's Abortion Out Loud campaign also works with schools and college campuses to provide education, financial support, and access to young people in need of contraception and/or an abortion. You can donate to them.

"Having access to equitable and affordable abortions is something that I believe would be beneficial to all Mississippians. Especially when it comes to things like maternal death rates and the increase in the rise of kids in foster care who are not protected," said Advocates for Youth Rep. Kadin Love.

"What’s being delivered in classrooms around the country is a patchwork of policy and practice,” said Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnerships and organizing for Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that promotes adolescent sexual health programs and policies. “All 50 states have varying different sex education requirements, if at all, and much of that power is then given to local school districts that also vary from district to district."

Websites such as Amaze.org, PlannedParenthood.org, Scarleteen.com and Sexetc.org are filled with accessible, accurate and developmentally and age-appropriate information for young people.

The experts also recommended several other resources: Amaze.org has a website and a YouTube channel specifically designed for adolescents by the nonprofit Advocates for Youth, which focuses on sex education.

Nora Gelperin, a sex educator and director of sexuality education at Advocates for Youth in Washington, D.C., has watched, dismayed, as politicians, pundits and activists have suggested that educators like her are “groomers” over the last few months

Niharika Rao [Abortion Out Loud activist], a senior at Barnard College in New York who uses they pronouns, said students had demanded that medication abortion be made available on campus: “College student access to abortion is being stigmatized and politicized,” they said.

The school board’s decision was “heartbreaking and, quite honestly, infuriating,” said Brittany McBride, associate director of sex education and training for Advocates for Youth, a sex education advocacy group. “Young people deserve and have a right to a complete and honest education.” “The practical support is really increasing — the rides, the shelter, the funds and all of the different logistical pieces that are needed to make access to abortion care possible,” said Tamara Marzouk, director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth.

"When students don’t have access to complete sex education, life happens to them,” McBride says. “They’re at higher risk of unintended pregnancies, STIs, suicide ideation, and drugs and alcohol abuse. When folks aren’t provided access to complete education, they aren’t set up for success in the same kind of way.”

“I think that the responsibility to provide access to care increases with this reversal… especially in banned states,” said Tamara Marzouk, director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth, a national nonprofit supporting students’ sexual health and rights.

“We are continuing to see student survivors experience punishment, retaliation, and be pushed out of school due to the anti-survivor 2020 regulations, which give schools permission to shirk their responsibility to protect students,” said Emma Grasso Levine, manager of Know Your IX, a survivor and youth-led project of Advocates for Youth that aims to empower students to end sexual and dating violence in their schools. “It cannot be overstated how much student survivors need these Title IX rule changes to ensure fair grievance processes, and guarantee that survivors’ education is not further interrupted by the impacts of sexual violence.”

“Schools are becoming the sector where the culture wars are playing out,” Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnerships, and organizing with Advocates for Youth, said in an interview with The Advocate. These culture wars tend to focus on LGBTQ+ issues, sex education, and teaching about racism. Florida’s law will further marginalize queer students and LGBTQ+ families, she said. “It is already creating a culture of fear for students and educators,” she noted.

Yael Beneventuo Ladin he helped design Advocates for Youth’s abortion doula training, which was in its fifth of six weeks when the draft Supreme Court opinion was leaked. Working to deal with the potential outcomes of the court’s expected ruling both nationally and on her campus, she learned “a lot of people were afraid, but they had no idea of what to be afraid of.”

Some experts say age-appropriate instruction should begin earlier. For instance, the National Sex Education Standards developed by SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, Answer and Advocates for Youth, a group that works to advance sex education, say that sex education should begin in kindergarten. Based on those standards, early conversations are not about the act of sex, but cover basic information about male and female anatomy and concepts like consent and personal boundaries.

An essay by Emma Schultz, YouthASC member That's why I work to support abortion access. My goal is to make sure everyone has the care they need, regardless of where they live. In Ohio where I live, there are already dozens of abortion restrictions, with a near-total ban held up in court. After today's decision overturning Roe. v. Wade, it's likely that my state will become one of the many to ban abortion entirely.

Emma Grasso Levine, manager of Know Your IX, a youth-led victims’ rights group, said in a statement that the organization was continuing to see survivors “experience punishment, retaliation, and be pushed out of school due to the anti-survivor 2020 regulations.”

Tamara Marzouk, the director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth, recommended people check out Apiary for Practical Support’s website to connect with a nearby organization and learn about other ways to help people access abortion services. “Do your research about what exists in your community already and … absolutely start something if there is a need and if no one is doing the work already,” Marzouk said.

“We’re not willing to compromise on someone’s identity or their families’ identities,” Gelperin responded. “The more you yield, the more they’ll decimate sex ed.” Plus, she added, “we already have parental opt-out.” “We’ve made a lot of progress since the ’80s and ’90s,” said Nora Gelperin, the educational director of Advocates for Youth. “But it’s gotten really scary out there. These issues of personal safety are new. Educators are getting death threats.

As the debate over abortion rights continues, women are sharing their stories with theSkimm. Including Karli VanZile. In 2019, she had an abortion at 15 weeks. The 22-year-old had the procedure done in Charleston, South Carolina. A year later, her world changed by a diagnosis — she had HIV. That became a pivotal moment in her life — and helped her become an advocate for health and reproductive rights orgs like Advocates for Youth. Here’s her story.

“Young LGBTQ+ people are facing attacks on our bodily autonomy and rights,” said Sydney Greene, manager of digital content and strategy at Advocates for Youth. “It is vitally important for companies, organizations, and people showing up to Pride this year to do everything they can to pass the Equality Act, which will provide protections for the queer and trans youth who are under attack in many parts of the United States right now.”

In this op-ed, Bogi Szalai, a youth ambassador at AMAZE, explores the need for comprehensive and inclusive sex education. I’m 15, and though I’m a sophomore in high school, I have never learned about consent in school. I have never learned about healthy relationships in a sex education class. I have definitely never had access to any LGBTQ+ inclusive education in my classes, like what prevention and protection might look like for LGBTQ+ young people.

As Brittany McBride, associate director of sex education at Advocates for Youth, says, sex ed in the United States varies from state to state, and even with schools from classroom to classroom. Of the 24 states that require sex ed at all, only 17 require that it be LGBTQ-inclusive, and only nine require any discussion on consent. Missouri doesn’t mandate sex ed, but when it’s taught, it must stress abstinence, sex only within marriage, and does not have to include information on gender or sexual orientation.

“Information is not the enemy. Information is powerful for young people. It is protective for young people,” says Debra Hauser, head of Advocates for Youth. Hauser’s organization is behind that revised curriculum for health and sexual education. “There is a purposeful, I believe, effort to confuse and distort what is really happening,” she says. Hauser says there are reasons why the 3Rs curriculum includes concepts such as educating first graders on defining sexual abuse and teaching second graders to identify parts of male and female genitalia.

Sex education is “the exact opposite” of grooming, says Nora Gelperin, the director of sexuality education at Advocates for Youth, a sex-ed nonprofit. “Sex education, even when started in the earliest grades, has shown to be protective for kids, especially around child sexual abuse.”

"Schools have become ground zero for the culture wars," said Debra Hauser of Advocates for Youth.

“I hear about so many barriers young people in particular face when a prescription is required — from long wait times for appointments to health care providers refusing to prescribe birth control because of their religious or moral beliefs,” says Angela Maske, who works with the group Advocates for Youth and manages the #FreeThePill Youth Council that led a recent demonstration outside the White House, complete with a mock pharmacy counter stocked with faux boxes of birth control pills alongside things like cough syrup.

by Larada Lee-Wallace, Abortion Out Loud activist

As co-director of Students United for Reproductive Justice at the University of California, Berkeley, Marandah Field-Elliot helped to bring medication abortion to the school’s student health center, an effort that ultimately became part of the California initiative to make medication abortion available at all public colleges and universities. Now state campaign manager for abortion access for the group Advocates for Youth, Field-Elliot has also worked with Massachusetts students on expanding care. She said that people wrongly assume that college students can easily find abortion providers.

“This case has created a road map for abusers to use against those they have abused,” said Emma Grasso Levine, manager of Know Your IX. “The smear campaign organized against Amber Heard ― who is a survivor of intimate partner violence ― is not a silencing and discrediting tactic that only impacts celebrities,” Grasso Levine added. “Student survivors who report and speak out are often retaliated against through public attacks and defamation suits by their abusers and others in attempts to keep them quiet. This case is just one example of the ever-expanding, disturbing backlash against the survivor justice movement, and of abusers utilizing systems intended to support survivors in order to further harm them.”

(Campus Organizer) Maxx Fenning worries that the bill may have a chilling effect on LGBTQ student-led clubs. Though the legislation focuses on classroom discussion about LGBTQ issues, Fenning says its vagueness about what's acceptable may discourage students and staff advisors from having candid conversations. Advocacy groups have filed lawsuits to block the bill, arguing that it violates free speech, among other Constitutional rights. If these lawsuits don't succeed, Fenning and other activists will be closely watching how enforcement plays out.

“Students are taking it on themselves to protest the institutions and the spaces that are allowing violence to happen,” says Sage Carson, the manager of Know Your IX, an advocacy group that teaches students their rights when it comes to sexual violence in schools.

For sex education to succeed, “these young people have to have the ability to be centered in their education and have robust conversations in a really safe space to really learn from those experiences,” said Brittany McBride, the associate director of sex education at the nonprofit Advocates for Youth. “And we lost that with the virtual learning.”

"This couldn't come at a worse time. Sex education is arguably more important now than ever, said Brittany McBride, associate director of sex education at youth sexual health and rights non-profit Advocates for Youth.

Kayla Quimbley, a member of ECHO and a NYHAAD Ambassador is the only youth member of PACHA.

"These stories are two of the 26 contained in the court brief filed by Advocates for Youth and We Testify, two reproductive rights groups who want to make sure that people who have had abortions are heard loudly and clearly by the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority seems wildly out of touch with mainstream American sentiment about the importance of access to legal abortion."

"I had an abortion at home because I couldn't access an abortion before the abortion ban took place — my access was already stripped from me before September 1st."

"Sex ed needs to be honest and accurate and give young people the information and support they need to live the lives they deserve. These are life skills. We can't expect them to become adults with an incomplete toolbox. We need to give them the information before they need it," said Brittany McBride of Advocates for Youth.

University of California Davis senior and Advocates for Youth activist Audin Leung has spent their entire college career championing a novel concept — free period products throughout campuses. “People are surprised, or they think it’s a radical idea, but it’s not a very radical idea because it’s a basic need,” Leung said.

Read about the importance of LGBTQ inclusive and affirming sex ed with quotes from staff members Armonté Butler, Kinjo Kiema, Brittany McBride, Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes and Youth Resource member Jaden!

“A lot of young people are experiencing sexual encounters they don’t understand because someone else is introducing it to them,” said Ponny White, a sexual and reproductive health and rights activist with Advocates for Youth. “We want to equip young people with tools and education so they can be autonomous and living a fulfilling life.”

“(Lhamon's) extensive background in civil rights and focus on young folks’ rights is really exciting to us after four years of a Department of Education that was really focused on prioritizing schools and school liability over student civil rights,” Carson said. “We hope that her return to the department will also bring about a return to a focus on protecting students from discrimination and harassment," said Sage Carson, the manager of Know Your IX, a group that advocates for the end of sexual and dating violence in educational settings.

"If my years working with campus survivor-justice organization Know Your IX taught me anything, it’s that gender justice is incompatible with our hierarchical, punitive, political-economic system," says Know Your IX activist Jaslin Kaur.

“On the other hand, researchTrusted Source has shown that one in eight PrEP-eligible people live in ‘PrEP deserts,’ or at least a 30-minute drive from a clinic where they can access PrEP,” said Lincoln Mondy, the associate director of strategic projects at Advocates for Youth.

Activist Sage Carson, manager of the group Know Your IX, told NBC News, "Student survivors need immediate action on Title IX. What seems like just a few months to non-students is an entire semester for a student. Survivors can't spend another semester, let alone another four years, with the current status of the Title IX regulation."

“What we really need right now is targeted or prioritized outreach campaigns that are really educating folks about PrEP,” said Armonté Butler, senior program manager of LGBTQ health and rights at Advocates for Youth. “But also making sure that sex education includes information about PrEP.”

Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnerships and organizing at Advocates for Youth, said advocates hope the upcoming White House budget will serve as a signal for Congress and will not include funding for abstinence-only programs but will include more funds for comprehensive sexual education. “There’s urgent work to be done when it comes to access to care, as well as access to comprehensive sex ed, especially given ... the COVID-19 crisis and virtual learning,” she said.

“If schools are teaching quality sex education that adheres to the National Sex Education Standards, then students should receive complete, accurate and inclusive information about puberty. However, state health education standards and school districts differ across the country, including many that have no requirement to teach puberty,” said Brittany McBride, associate director for sex education at Advocates for Youth.

In this letter, 278 students and survivors, including activists from Know Your IX, communicate to the Biden administration the changes it can make to Title IX to better protect young people.

“We’re really seeing it used as a way for schools to confuse and manipulate survivors, which is really what we’ve seen for decades,” Sage Carson, the manager of Know Your IX, said of the DeVos rules. “Now it’s this really scary process on the books, and it gives the schools a way to say, ‘Do you really want to go through this?’”

Further complicating matters is that things have changed since the Obama administration issued its rules. “It’s not as simple as, ‘put the 2011 rules back on the books and call it good,’” said Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX.

An already difficult situation was made worse by the fact that some schools didn’t clearly inform students and other community members of the new rule or of their policy changes to address it. “Some schools were very forthcoming about their change in policies,” Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX, a project combating sexual violence at schools and on college campuses, told Vox. But there were “also a lot of schools that just tried to kind of silently kind of slide them in.”

She felt clear about her decision to have an abortion. But her path was full of obstacles sown by the collision of the pandemic and state laws designed to make having an abortion as prolonged and difficult as possible. After finding the door locked, Lee called the clinic from the parking lot. The next available appointment was a month and a half away, she was informed. A clinic escort told her the doctor Lee was supposed to see that day was sick. The country was in chaos. “I went home, broke down, and cried,” said Larada Lee, Abortion Out Loud Youth Activist.

“It seems laughable in the darkest way that DeVos resigned from the Trump administration because the violence was too much when she has used her role in the Department of Education to continuously commit violence against students, to make schools less safe,” said Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX.

"If you want to be an activist, it's all about collective organizing ... you can't "do" activism without people who are going to hold you accountable," said LaKia Williams, member of our Young Womxn of Color for Reproductive Justice Collective.

Khouri Lassiter from our Youth Resource Council writes: "The media focus on Elliot also has the unfortunate effect of yet again centering the conversation about transgender identity around very privileged white people. Elliot Page himself has carefully framed his own message to focus on Black and Latino/a/x trans folks, correctly noting that BIPOC trans people face the highest levels of violence. Every trans person’s journey is different. For some of us, we must also carry the burden of the racism we experience every day of our lives."

Advocates for Youth. Gen Z activists “have really pushed for the issue as an intersectional issue. Your race, gender, sexuality, age — all of those contributing identities impact your access to care.” — Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnerships and organizing at Advocates for Youth.

"Biden’s Department of Education (ED) should work closely with student survivors to issue new regulations aimed at achieving Title IX’s intended goal––equity," Sage Carson, manager of our Know Your IX campaign.

“They’re having the opposite outcome of what their desired impact is, and if they would just follow what the science and the evidence tells us works, those young people in Texas would be in a far better and healthier state,” said Nora Gelperin, director of sexuality education and training at Advocates for Youth.

"It is not helpful to present child sexual abuse as a shadowy conspiracy, when we know that most perpetrators are actually known to the child," Debra Hauser, the president of Advocates for Youth, told Salon.

"Oftentimes, people come out in very isolated little islands, and it is very hard because of that isolation initially," said Ameera Khan, an activist with the Muslim Youth Leadership Council, which works on LGBTQ, sexual health and reproductive rights issues. "But as the community grows — and there are communities in every ethnicity across the globe — that makes their culture almost countercultures with their own language."

"Teaching about LGBTQ+ history is one of several protective factors — the characteristics, conditions, and behaviors that directly improve positive health outcomes or reduce the effects of stressful life events — that affirm the identities of LGBTQ+ youth," Armonté Butler, Senior Program Manager for LGBTQ Health & Rights at Advocates for Youth, tells Romper in an email. "Other protective factors include acceptance and support from parents and peers and the inclusion of Gender and Sexuality Alliances (formerly known as Gay-Straight Alliances) at schools."

Louie A. Ortiz-Fonseca (@granvarones) is a queer HIV positive creative born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. He is the creator of Gran Varones, a digital project that highlights LGBTQ pop culture history and community storytelling through a Black/Latinx lens. He also works in partnership with young people living with HIV to combat stigma (Advocates for Youth), and hosts a YouTube series for LGBTQ youth, “Kikis with Louie”. Louie is a father of a 17 year-old son and worships the Patron St. Mariah Carey.

One of the many curricula OSPI reviewed is called "Rights, Respect, Responsibility (3Rs)," published by an organization called Advocates for Youth. Advocates for Youth launched nearly 40 years ago with a mission "to promote effective adolescent reproductive and sexual health programs and policies in the United States and the global south."

“Historically, we viewed Title IX as a great tool to improve campus policies,” Sage Carson, the manager of Know Your IX, told nearly 200 victim advocates and students during a webinar about the new regulations last week. “Now, it’s a bit more figuring out how to get around Title IX.”

If your health center is closed or operating at reduced capacity, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing may be more difficult to access. By making barrier methods more widely available, you’re helping to slow the transmission of STIs, too. Student leaders can apply for Advocates for Youth’s Condom Collective, and if accepted, they’ll be sent 500 condoms to distribute on campus.

by Nicole Bedera, Seth Galanter, and Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX. Despite the DeVos administration’s rhetoric around due process and fairness, there is nothing fair about this regulation. And that’s even more egregious when the law in question—Title IX—is intended to promote equality on campus. Instead of fulfilling its goal to protect students from the threat of sexual violence, the new regulation makes it easy for perpetrators to rape without consequence and forces their victims to bear the cost.

Childcare is rarely considered in conversations around voter suppression. But for those without access to it, it can be a huge obstacle on voting day. In the United States, childcare is unaffordable for most families. “Lack of childcare is only one out of many issues that make it difficult for low-income communities to vote,” said HK Gray, an organizer with Advocates For Youth. “I’ve never missed the opportunity to vote in any election but… I often end up voting with a baby on my hip, most of the time while she’s throwing temper tantrums,” Gray said. “This causes me to rush or sometimes having to quit mid-voting and come back the next day. It’s exhausting and I can understand why some parents choose to not vote at all, and why low-income communities have such low voter turnouts when this is just one issue working against them.”

Speaking to Elite Daily, Louis Ortiz-Fonesca, Senior Program Manager for LGBTQ Heath and Rights with Advocates for Youth, said: “I explain it by simply saying that the ‘plus’ is an inclusive and intentional way of representing different identities and experiences.”

The hundreds of NPPC co-sponsors, including 12 unions, ranged from Advocates for Youth to the Zeta Phi Beta sorority. Many teamed up to broadcast the rallies on social media, accounting for the huge turnout: At least 150,000 attended the first 3-1/2-hour session that began at 10 a.m. June 20, and thousands more tuned into rebroadcasts that night and the following evening.

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that LGBTQ employees are protected against discrimination. While the decision doesn't invalidate the Trump administration's reversal on Friday of Obama-era protections for transgender people, the organization Advocates for Youth told Mashable that it does "put us a step in the right direction to have stronger case law and stronger interpretation of the words around sex discrimination."

According to Rebecca Thimmesch, Campaign Manager of Free the Pill at Advocates for Youth, the FDA decision to put the first birth control pills on the market were still very-much grounded in stigma. “The Supreme Court didn’t legalize birth control use among married couples until 1965, and among non-married people until 1972. So there has always been inequality in terms of who had access and who didn’t,” Thimmesch tells Refinery29. “For low-income young people, young people of color, undocumented young people and disabled young people, in particular, the obstacles to gaining and filling a prescription for birth control can be insurmountable.”

Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnerships, and organizing at Advocates for Youth, said even young people who tackle judicial bypass with an attorney often feel “stigmatized, judged, or even criminalized—like they had done something wrong.” “Forced parental consent laws, like this new one in Florida, are just one more barrier in a whole system of obstacles for young people to access abortion care,” Thu-Thao Rhodes told Rewire.News. “What lawmakers may not realize is that parental involvement laws have no clear impact on birth or abortion rates, do not guarantee that a young person will talk to their parents before they have an abortion, and often just delay young people’s abortion care.”

As human rights organizations, scholars, defenders and activists, we the 167 undersigned, write to express our grave concern about the work of the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights and any potential report or output that undermines the international human rights system and purports to reinterpret its respective treaties and monitoring bodies.

“I think the challenge right now is figuring out exactly what’s already out there [to access reproductive health care],” Rebecca Thimmesch, who leads youth contraceptive access work at Advocates for Youth, told MTV News. She anticipates telehealth apps will become a vital resource for young people in need of specific kinds of appointments — though she emphasizes telehealth is not an ideal option for everybody or every condition. Insurance through apps can be confusing, and some young people may be unable to receive necessary mail deliveries for treatment — like shipments of contraceptives — because of strict parents or housing instability. She points to the benefits of over-the-counter birth control pills, which would allow any young person to head into a pharmacy and stock up on medication while practicing social distancing.

"The goal isn’t to saddle over-burdened parents with yet more expectations around home-schooling, says Lincoln Mondy of Advocates for Youth, one of the organizations behind AMAZE, although he does note that in all those viral color-coded parental curricula, sex ed is conspicuously absent. Instead, the idea is to set parents up to have ongoing casual conversations with their kids around sex. “From what we know about the patchwork quilt of sex-ed laws across the country, a lot of kids are getting really harmful abstinence-only education or nothing at all,” said Mondy. “I think this provides an opportunity to really check in: Is my kid being given all the tools and resources they need to develop healthily mentally and socially—and, if not, what can I do to help them?”

"One of the challenges facing youth living with HIV is the shift from pediatric care into adult care. That usually happens at age 25, and it puts them at risk of falling out of care. To ensure the transition is as smooth as possible, Advocates for Youth—the organization that launched NYHAAD seven years ago—released the Medical Mentorship Toolkit & Guide."

When asked about these survey results, Burnside didn’t hesitate to blame the limited or nonexistent sexual education in schools. He also pointed to the culture of fear and misinformation in certain communities, something with which Kayla Quimbley agrees. “The problem in rural areas is misinformation and stigma,” she says. “Where I’m from, everyone knows everyone, and people don’t want to go to the health clinic because people they know from the community work there, review the charts, administer the medicine and tell your business. So people instead sweep things under the rug. Something so prevalent as HIV shouldn’t be taboo.” - Featuring youth activists Corey and Kayla and staff member Louie Ortiz-Fonseca.

Sage Carson, manager of the anti-sexual violence organization Know Your IX, has heard from at least 15 students whose schools have given little to no guidances on how their pending Title IX cases will continue, if at all, amid the outbreak. Carson told HuffPost that many survivors have seen other pending disciplinary cases still move forward, such as plagiarism accusations or roommate disputes. Title IX complaints, however, seem to be stuck in the mud. “We know that schools don’t always think of survivors first ― or even second,” Carson said. “So, knowing that it may take a long time for administrators to address this issue during the coronavirus can be very scary.” While these are unprecedented times, schools need to be transparent and need to prioritize giving survivors as much autonomy in the Title IX process as possible, said Carson, from Know Your IX. “Sexual violence takes away control from someone,” Carson said. “So making sure that survivors have choices and those choices are in their hands is one of the most important things that advocates and schools can do. When schools go silent, it can bring a lot of fear for survivors who have been really grappling with trying to gain back some control in their lives.”

As LGBTQ+ community and health leadership, the undersigned organizations offer to stand shoulder to shoulder with the mainstream health leadership to make sure we learn from history and do not allow any population to be disproportionately impacted or further stigmatized by a virus.

Victim advocacy groups say they are already seeing the fallout of the new rules. Sage Carson, manager of Know Your IX, said the confusion around the rules and the department's stance is already preventing students from filing Title IX complaints with OCR or even their schools.

The Future of Sex Education Initiative recently released its second edition of "The National Sex Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12" in an effort to support teachers seeking a medically accurate, trauma-informed and inclusive sex education. The resource was produced by Advocates for Youth, Answer and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

The day before the hearing, Ms. sat down at the Advocates for Youth Headquarters in D.C. with young activists from Louisiana who traveled to Washington to represent their home state. We discussed an array of topics, including activist burnout, mental health and the struggle of being taken seriously by older folks on either side of the fight.

Kaylan Tanner, a young activist from New Orleans who traveled to Washington, D.C. for the rally, spoke before an audience of thousands of pro-abortion rights advocates at the #MyRightMyDecision rally about how the Court’s decision could impact her community: “As a 20-year-old college student in Louisiana, the thought of such a personal decision of if and when I choose to start a family being left up to politicians is terrifying. Young people have the right to make decisions about our lives and our futures, especially when it comes to the decision to have a child. We don’t need politicians and barriers standing in our way. Young people need access to the full spectrum of affordable reproductive care, including sex education, contraception, abortion, and pre-natal and maternal care.” Deb Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth: “Young people have the right to make their own decisions about their reproductive health care without political interference. Medically unnecessary barriers to abortion care are especially harmful to young people who already face challenges accessing the care they need. “I am proud to support young people from Louisiana and across the country who are challenging the Supreme Court to uphold their constitutional rights and keep clinics open. It is young people who are leading the fight to ensure everyone has access to abortion, and we must follow their lead.”

A conversation with sexuality education experts including Advocates' Brittany McBride.

The group Know Your IX, a project of the advocacy group Advocates for Youth, put the new announcement into that context. “We wish we could celebrate this new initiative from ED,” the group said on Twitter. “But we aren’t going to praise DeVos and Marcus for enforcing a law that they are simultaneously ripping to shreds. This PR stunt won’t soften the blow that survivors are about to face when DeVos drops her Title IX rule.”

"What the Trump Administration started, and the 9th Circuit has upheld today, is a shameful dereliction of society's duty to ensure that all people -- and especially all young people -- have what they need to stay healthy and protect their futures," Deb Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth, an organization supporting young peoples' access to reproductive healthcare, said in a statement. "Young people are working to move this country forward, not backward, and they won't tolerate these constant attacks on reproductive and sexual health care services."

Shreya Pokhrel, an Advocates for Youth student organizer at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told Supermajority News that there are some important things that communities can do to help low-income residents who can’t afford menstrual products. “In my organization, Planned Parenthood Generation Action at UAB (the University of Alabama at Birmingham), we successfully organized for the installation of free menstrual hygiene dispensers in the majority of the female and gender-neutral restrooms on campus,” Pokhrel said. “I would encourage communities to organize menstrual hygiene drives with local organizations, advocate for dispenser installation on college campuses, and encourage private businesses to place a basket of free products in restrooms.”

In addition to the fight in Congress over the HEA, Sage Carson, executive director of Know Your IX, said the advocacy group is preparing to campaign to prod colleges and universities to take steps like continuing to investigate off-campus sexual assault and harassment, even if they are no longer required under the new rule. Carson said her group also is planning to lobby state legislatures to pass laws requiring institutions to go beyond requirements of the rule.

"Amongst the 30% of HBCUs that have LGBTQ student organizations, UDC is one of them. The Alliance Group (T.A.G.) serves as the first and only LGBTQ+ organization for undergraduates at UDC. ... Last semester, one of the only signs for gender-neutral restrooms was vandalized on campus. T.A.G. immediately jumped into action to meet with administrators and educate their campus community of this bias incident and the ways it directly impacted LGBTQ+ and Non-binary students." Shabre West of YouthResource serves as VP of TAG.

“There’s still a lingering idea that dating violence is an interpersonal issue that two folks need to work on, something that just happens between men and women, rather than seeing it as a form of violence that has an impact on education,” said Sage Carson, the manager of the victims’ rights advocacy group Know Your IX. Ms. Carson said that she considered the dating violence provision a positive development, but, coupled with Ms. DeVos’s other proposals, it could be a “double-edged sword” for victims. “Some of the procedures could be extremely dangerous for them,” Ms. Carson said.

Advocates like 21-year-old Elizabeth Boyle, University of Notre Dame student body president and an organizer for Know Your IX, a youth-led nonprofit initiative, say removing oversight of Title IX exemptions may lead to abuses of the law, and allowing mediation could make it easier for schools to promote a “forgive and forget” mentality when it comes to sexual assault.

"I can't have a meaningful lesson with young people on what relationship goals may look like when we haven't established the foundation of how to negotiate with a partner, how to communicate, how to select a partner who's respectful of you," says Brittany McBride, senior program manager of sexuality education at Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that works on sexuality education and sexual health.

by Jermany, YouthResource. "nearly seven years, it’s disappointing that only Morehouse is offering PrEP to HBCU college students despite the fact that Black college students are at a greater risk of acquiring HIV.

by Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes. "Florida’s forced parental consent legislation, and all laws like it, leave young people at risk and without recourse. It puts a young person’s decision about their own pregnancy in someone else’s hands, robbing them of the bodily autonomy we are fighting to preserve. All who are concerned about young people’s safety, and all who believe in the right to abortion access, must fight forced parental involvement in young people’s abortion care with as much commitment and ferocity as we would any other attack on abortion rights."

"Advocates for Youth was also critical of the new policy, telling the Cut in a statement, “It is the purest violation of basic human rights for people to have their bodies scrutinized by officials, their motives for visiting impugned, and their personal testimony that they are not pregnant ignored.”

"Sex education needs to be modernized. So many don't even receive comprehensive sex education." Brittany McBride is the senior program manager for sexuality education at Advocates for Youth. She says that children need a complete idea of the possible legal consequences of sexting, but not in a shameful way. And she says that includes talking about consent. "Understanding consent really sets us up for success, to understand what a healthy relationship that may or may not include sexting could entail. That includes clear communication and conversation from the beginning and then consistently throughout the relationship."

But others say that Nexplanon (a brand name for the implant) and the IUD are generally very safe, and that the bill could keep teens from getting reproductive health care they need. A parental permission requirement could block young people in abusive or otherwise unsafe homes from getting birth control, Rebecca Thimmesch, manager of Advocates for Youth’s Free the Pill Youth Council, told Vox. And regardless of home environment, having to notify a parent places an additional obstacle in front of teens seeking birth control, making it more likely they will experience an unintended pregnancy. While laws specifically targeting methods of birth control are rare, the law is part of a larger pattern of states requiring parental notification and consent for reproductive health services from abortion to childbirth care when teens do have children, Thimmesch said. “It is really tricky, across the country, for young people to be getting the care that they need safely and confidentially and affordably,” she said. “Any efforts to make that harder are definitely moving in the wrong direction.”

"With help from Shout Your Abortion and Advocates for Youth, I went in search of 39 stories from people who have had abortions — instead, I collected 60 stories from people all across the country. "

“Young people need sex education that not only includes information about the prevention [of] STI[s], but also builds their skills to communicate effectively about boundaries and desires, negotiate condom use, and routinize STI screening,” Advocates for Youth President Debra Hauser told Rewire.News. “Unfortunately, many schools omit important lessons on condom use in the misguided fear of provoking controversy. This omission stigmatizes condoms and leaves many youth more vulnerable.”

"Children are trying to make sense of their body parts, and their feelings" Nora Gelperin, director of Sexuality Education for Advocates for Youth, a group that advocates for access to sexual health education and services, told Insider. "It all feels overwhelming."

Abstinence-only programs are failing students around the country, leading to a national rise in STIs. We took a look at the students fighting for a solution. (Featuring Lincoln Mondy)

Brittany McBride is a sex educator with Advocates for Youth, and she works with 40 of the largest school districts in the U.S. to improve sex education. McBride explains how she answered that question when her own daughter was just 5 or 6 years old. "Really, when a kid is that young," McBride says, "the question is not so much about sex but instead about, like, space and time. And where was I before I got here? And how did I get here? As opposed to the actual act of sex and how they were created." So, McBride says, just answer the question they're asking. No less, no more. So the first answer could be: "You grew in [mom or your birth mom's] uterus. And that's where a baby lives and grows until they're born. And then you were born, and you joined our family and we've loved you."

"Just last month, Prevention Access Campaign and Merck released a study that showed accurate knowledge of HIV seems to be decreasing among millennials and Gen Z. It’s something that Adonis Timone is trying to personally push back against. Timone is a member of ECHO (Engaging Communities around HIV Organizing), a council of youth activists who live with HIV, which was established by Advocates for Youth, one of the organizations that signed the open letter. Timone, who is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, told Healthline they find it crucial to combat any information on social media that might seem like “propaganda” that could be harmful to vulnerable communities. Given that Timone has been vocal about their experiences living with HIV, they said friends and acquaintances, both in person and online, will frequently ask them questions about some of the information circulating online. “People will ask me questions and sometimes I don’t have the full answer to whether something is ‘news’ — sometimes it’s hard to determine whether it’s ‘real news’ or ‘fake news,’” they said. Timone added these kinds of social media ads can lead to heated discussions online, as users debate whether or not what they are seeing is accurate. “Because I don’t like to argue on the internet, I just try to post the accurate information. Sometimes I’ll just leave it there to let it sink in even if I get a lot of backlash for sharing that information,” Timone said."

"Becca Thimmesch is a campaign manager at Free the Pill, an organization working to bring a birth control option over the counter, covered by insurance, and accessible to people of all ages. Thimmesch acknowledged that her birth control journey has been “extremely long and painful.” She said she tried a half dozen pills, then the Nuvaring, which she liked. Then, in a long-term relationship, she decided to get a Mirena IUD. “Obviously the Trump administration is making things worse,” she said. “But frankly many of the young people I work for have always had a hard time accessing the care they need, irrespective of who sits in the White House. So, to me it’s less about fighting a particular presidential administration and more about building a better future for all young people.”

And Sage Carson, who runs the youth civil rights group Know Your IX, said the survivors advocacy community is recognizing that prisons can result in further harm and might not always be the best way to hold people accountable. But they still encounter scenarios like one that Carson experienced when she worked with domestic violence survivors while in college in Delaware. “I remember sitting with our client and she said she was raped by her husband,” Carson recalled, “and both officers looked at us and said, ‘Well that’s not a thing.’ Many of those systems are still at the point where they’re not taking the act of violence seriously.”

(By Louie Ortiz-Fonseca) Unearthing the histories and legacies of people we lost to AIDS sometimes means discovering and losing someone in the same moment. The celebration can quickly become a kind of grief that leaves you raging and fighting ghosts of a not-so-distant past that allowed such extraordinary losses to happen. This is how I would describe my discovery of the legend, Lady Catiria.

(by Lisa, ECHO member) On October 12, 2012, my life took a turn I would have never seen coming. At seventeen years old, I sat across from a stranger while he asked me personal questions about my previous sexual partners and encounters with no explanation as to why. Once I became reluctant to answer out of confusion, he proceeded to tell me that I was HIV-positive. My heart dropped to my stomach and I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. My body became motionless and the air around me seemed empty. I would have never imagined that I would be sitting in a health department office with a look and feeling of such defeat. That day changed me forever, but it also helped mold me into the person I am today.

"28% of millennials believe they can contract HIV through [skin to skin] contact like hugging," Toraje Heyward tells Bustle, citing a study conducted by the pharmaceutical company Merck and Prevention Access, a health equity initiative that fights stigma against HIV and AIDS. Heyward, who lives with HIV, is a council member for ECHO, a "first-of-its kind council of youth activists living with HIV who are actively organizing online and in their communities." ECHO is run through the organization Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit dedicated to sexual health education, the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and more.

(By Tyreese, ECHO member) I found out I was HIV positive when I was 18 years old, and now I am 24. When I first found out my diagnosis, it was a bit tough simply because of the stigma that comes with having HIV in my community. I was ashamed for many years until I found a mentor in my community who helped me find the confidence to get on medication and tell my story. When I turned 20 and started my medication, it was difficult to be consistent as I was struggling with housing and additional barriers at the time. My mentor always tried to keep me in good spirits and never judged or stigmatized any decision I made. He supported me in finding a job and home, which helped me take my medication consistently.

(by Talia and Chloe, Muslim Youth Leadership Council members) On Dec. 1, we commemorate World AIDS Day. As of 2018, approximately 38 million people around the world are living with HIV. 770,000 people died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2018 alone, bringing the total AIDS-related deaths since the start of the epidemic to a staggering 32 million people. Treatment access has increased but is still not comprehensive; in 2018, 62% of people living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral treatment.

"There is an inherent judgment in saying something like you should wait until marriage," Caitlyn Caruso, manager of state and local campaigns at Advocates for Youth, tells Bustle. "Even if fathers aren't saying directly 'you're impure,' that is the message received when young people are being told what is right and what is wrong." "It's fair to say that young people having sex is still a relatively taboo topic," Caruso says. Caruso also points out that because young folks are reliant on their parents for everything, creating restrictive or judgmental ideas makes it difficult to be honest about their experiences if they aren't in line with familial ideals. If you aren't promoting autonomy around sexual experience, it communicates that you can't actually share openly. Caruso says this can and does lead to adverse consequences, like being less likely to seek sexual healthcare, or report harm or violation as it relates to sexuality.

Sage Carson, manager of the Know Your IX project at Advocates for Youth, an advocacy group, said the flood of public comments may not have changed the Education Department’s mind but could lay the groundwork for a legal challenge. “We hope it will give us grounds to really fight the rule through litigation,” she said.

"The American Medical Association condemns virginity tests," Brittany McBride, senior program manager for sexuality education at Advocates for Youth, tells Bustle. "A doctor who is committed to ensuring young people are healthy and safe would never conduct such a test or share that personal information without the young person's permission."

(By Maxine, YouthResource) Getting a job is not as easy as one, two, three, especially when you’re someone like me — young, Black, Queer, Transwoman, closeted and fresh out of college. On top of the difficulties inherent to finding a job, I have to worry about how my identities affect my ability to actually get and keep a job because I live in Tennessee, a place that has almost no legal protections against discrimination when it comes to my identities as a Queer Transwoman. This fact limits me well before I ever fill out an application. And in 2020, the Supreme Court will decide if discrimination against trans and other LGBTQ+ people in workplaces all over America is legal. Their decision will affect the foundation for what my life — and the lives of millions of young people like me — will look like in the future.

That’s where Nora Gelperin, a parent and longtime sex educator who’s currently the director of sexuality education and training at an organization called Advocates For Youth, comes in. She developed a sex ed video series called Amaze. With over 80 installments on topics ranging from gender identity and sexual orientation to sex trafficking, intersectionality, puberty, and even wet dreams, Gelperin revealed that technology can be “really a great companion for adults, whether they’re parents and caregivers or professionals having these conversations.”

In the face of the kinds of awareness that can create more suffering, it can be hard to find solace and ways to celebrate ourselves. But each year of living can be a victory. “As a Black, Trans non-binary person, each year that I am privileged enough to survive is a year to celebrate and reflect on,” August Clayton, 22, a student and organizer, tells Bustle. Feeling hyper-visible during a week that often reminds us of our mortality and fallen community is incredibly exhausting. Clayton, an activist with Advocates for Youth, which works towards sexual health equity, says that TAW needs to be about more than awareness of trans death and suffering. “Cis folks should know that we are more than our rising death toll. We have dreams, love interests, build families, and are nuanced communities; choose to center our lives and continue to act on injustice.”

“Hymens are not a measure of virginity,” Brittany McBride, a veteran sexual health educator with Advocates for Youth, told The Times. The organization provides sexual health information for young people through the website Amaze.org. T.I.'s children, like all young people, have a basic human right to a private relationship with their healthcare provider, McBride said, criticizing his behavior as a serious intrusion on that right. She noted that the idea of a “need for virginity” with daughters — something rarely discussed with sons — was “an unjust and unfair measure of where this person’s value lies, in a thin, mucosal piece of tissue that’s unfairly equated with a person’s worth.”

“The misconceptions that these tests have anything to do with virginity are unfortunately widespread, and our society continues to spread these myths as if they were based on scientific facts,” Brittany McBride, the senior program manager of Sexuality Education at Advocates for Youth, told the Cut. “This misconception that virginity can be tested is truly archaic and sexist and shames people with vulvas. Virginity is a concept that is completely personal and private — it is not a benchmark one is able to meet or not meet.”

“You are not chewed gum,” read an art display featuring wads of gum, located in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., unveiled on October 30 by advocates for science-based comprehensive sexual education. The display, organized by Advocates for Youth and Trojan, sought to push back on abstinence-only messaging that says sexually active youth are comparable to a chewed piece of gum for future partners.

Bukky Ogunrinola, a sophomore at Howard University and a representative of Advocates for Youth—which fights for sexual health, rights, and justice—went to a public high school in Idaho. She told Rewire.News she has seen firsthand the way fear-based tactics can backfire among a group of sexually curious young people. “As a product of fear-based sex ed, it’s never productive,” she said. “Now young people feel they need to hide everything when it comes to their sexual health.”

"Some of these programs compare sexually active teens to chewed-up gum; others compare them to cups of spit or used pieces of tape. Some teachers call students who aren’t virgins “tainted” and “impure.” And in most classrooms, the people being shamed for their sexual lives are young women and girls. Young people are speaking back—and demanding better from their national leaders. In partnership with Trojan, Advocates for Youth today will erect a 20-foot activist billboard covered in chewed-up gum speaking truth to power. “You Are Not Chewed Gum,” it will read. “Information Is the Best Protection.”"

Who needs high-tech holograms or Hollywood-quality sets and special effects to create a memorable social-issues installation—when 50,000 pieces of chewed-up, spit-soaked gum will get your point across just fine? On Oct. 30, Trojan condoms—with 72andSunny New York and nonprofit Advocates for Youth—staged a "chew-a-thon" on the National Mall in Washington, inviting passersby to add chomped-up pieces of gum to a most unappetizing wall display.

The campaign kicked off Wednesday with a week of action engaging students on over 100 campuses. The launch events will be part abortion speak-out and part reflection on an increasingly urgent question: “Why do you say abortion out loud?” Some are also acts of resistance in a country where abortion rights are under attack.

(by Daniel Nava Cabral, Youth Resource) PrEP, the strategy that prevents HIV, has existed for seven years. And statistically, as a young Latinx queer person, I’m in one of the groups that could benefit from PrEP. Yet I didn’t even hear about it until 2017 — and then, only because I was lucky to have informed people in my life. That’s just one small example of how when it comes to HIV prevention, queer Latinx youth are facing so many barriers, including a lack of comprehensive sexual health education, and stigma both within the Latinx community and in our society as a whole.

(by Armonte Butler, Advocates for Youth) National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day, annually celebrated on October 15, reminds us that it’s important to highlight and uplift the work of Latinx and Afro-Latinx-led organizations on the ground combatting HIV and LGBTQ-related stigma and discrimination. This month, I was able to chat with Manuel J. Diaz-Ramirez, Director of Community Health Action at La Clínica del Pueblo. La Clínica is a clinic that serves the Latinx population of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area by providing medical services, mental health and substance abuse counseling, language access services, and community health action programs. La Clínica was founded as a project of the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), providing free medical services in a volunteer-run clinic.

The decision to vacate the 2016 rule drew condemnation from LGBTQ rights advocates. Tyunique Nelson, a YouthResource activist who identifies as nonbinary, said their right to healthcare shouldn't even be up for public debate. "As trans and gender-nonconforming young people, it's bad enough every day we have to deal with people who violate our rights and treat us as lesser human beings," Nelson said in a statement released to HealthLeaders. "Allowing health care providers to deny us care is a danger to our health and a direct threat to our lives. I have the right not to experience discrimination when I'm going to the doctor, and so does every other trans and gender-nonconforming young person."

Rates of sexually transmitted disease diagnoses increased for the fifth consecutive year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report, released last week. How can this be prevented? We revisit last week’s conversation with Dr. Walkitria Smith, Family Medicine Associate Program Director at the Morehouse School of Medicine and Dr. Gail Bolan, director for CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. Plus, Dr. Shelley Francis-Travis and Deb Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth, join “Closer Look” today for a conversation about best practices for STD education, and increasing awareness among teenagers and young adults.

by Keke, International Youth Leadership Council - Every year on October 11, when the world celebrates the International Day of the Girl Child, I think of young women like Alem, who I met in Ethiopia this past summer. Alem was thirteen when her father arranged for her to marry one of the older men in her village. She ran away and came to the capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, to find work. Alem has been working for five years. She’s just just 18 years old. She told me that even though having an income was nice, she really wanted to go back to school.

(by Nicole Cheetham, Director, International Division) October 11 marks the International Day of the Girl, a day to celebrate girls worldwide, bring attention to some of the unique needs and challenges that girls face, and recommit to gender equality and the fulfillment of girls’ human rights. At AMAZE.org, an initiative that provides very young adolescents with medically accurate, age-appropriate, and honest sexuality education that is grounded in gender equality, educating and empowering girls is central to our mission. As someone who has worked with young people and youth-serving organizations in the global south to make access to sexual and reproductive health information and services more of a reality, I am proud to be a part of this initiative that brings sexuality education to young people through online, short, animated films.

“We’ve known for decades that the best way to prepare young people to protect their health is to provide honest, complete sex education that gives them the tools they need to prevent unintended pregnancy and STDs,” Hauser said. In addition to denying young people the resources they need to have safe sex, groups like Obria are also heaping shame onto the very idea of sex, Hauser said, which can discourage them from seeking out help and education elsewhere. “It’s propagating stigma and misinformation while doing nothing to help prevent STDs,” Hauser continued. “If we want young people to protect themselves from STDs, we have a responsibility to give them the information and skills they need, as well as providing reproductive and sexual healthcare services and making sure condoms are available.”

"Shabre West, a peer leader with Advocates For Youth, said in an emailed statement: “The job market is hard enough—the last thing young queer people need is homophobes and transphobes making it even harder with the support of the law. As a young, Black, queer woman, I’m here to tell you this generation will not allow our rights to be rolled back. All employers should do is foster an environment where young LGBTQ/nonbinary employees are valued, protected and empowered.”

(by Vanessa, member of the Muslim Youth Leadership Council, with quotes from other members of MyLC) "Given the Trump administration’s open hostility to reproductive rights, it is easy to forget that attacks on reproductive health care—especially for people with low incomes—are part of a long history of undermining access that is not limited to a single administration or political party. The experiences of Black Muslims may be complex due to sitting at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities, but they cannot be ignored in the fight for reproductive justice."

"Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a pill that people can take daily that is up to 90 percent effective at preventing one from contracting HIV. But even though it is a key sexual health tool, many people who need the drug aren’t getting it. " - by Armonte Butler, LGBTQ Health and Rights Program Manager

"I help lead contraceptive access initiatives across the country at Advocates for Youth. Through our work with young people and partner organizations, I’m constantly seeing how prescription requirements and age restrictions place unnecessary burdens on young people attempting to access contraception."

"Amaze, which is sponsored by the non-profit organization Advocates for Youth in collaboration with Answer and Youth Tech Health, has created a variety of resources for parents and kids to navigate an array of delicate topics. Its Age Guide is particularly helpful, categorizing dozens of videos for ages 3+, 5+, 7+, 10+, 13+, and for caregivers. "

One way to help parents learn how to talk to their kids about sex-adjacent topics without losing their cool is an online video series called “Amaze Jr.” (There’s also a well-watched series for teens called “Amaze.”) Ten of the animated YouTube videos, which are produced by a trio of nonprofits, are for young kids and another 11 are aimed at adults....Experts interviewed for this article identified just three available curriculums aimed at elementary-age children that hit on the main components — sexual abuse prevention, healthy relationship skills, medically accurate information about bodies and reproduction and material that is inclusive of all genders and sexual orientations — recommended in the National Sexuality Education Standards. Rights, Respect, Responsibility was developed by Advocates for Youth and includes free lesson plans for all of the elementary grades. Our Whole Lives: Lifespan Sexuality Education (OWL) was developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ and includes 8- and 10-lesson units for grades K-1 and 4-6, respectively.

“For folks that work in sexual violence spaces, this news was not surprising,” Sage Carson, the manager of Know Your IX, an advocacy group that works to end sexual violence in schools, tells Bustle. “We have known for a long time that young people experience extremely high rates of sexual violence, and also lack education and awareness about what healthy sexual relationships and encounters look like,” she says, adding that it was helpful to see that “what we're seeing on the ground is also showing up in the data.”

The coalition helped Beth Vial, who didn’t learn she was pregnant until she was six months along after chronic medical conditions masked her symptoms. As a 22-year-old college student living in Portland, Oregon, Beth Vial (Youth Testify storyteller) was beyond the point when nearly every abortion clinic in the country would perform the procedure. Vial’s only option for an abortion was New Mexico, where a volunteer with the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice drove her to and from the clinic in Albuquerque and brought her meals. The support she received inspired her to join the board of Northwest Access Abortion Fund, which helps women in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. “To have people I didn’t even know support me in ways that I didn’t even really know I needed at the time was unlike anything I have ever experienced,” said Vial, now 24. “It has encouraged me to give back to my community so other people don’t have to experience that alone.”

California is often celebrated as a leader in reproductive rights and access to abortion. But despite our state’s proactive policies, low-income people and young people still struggle to get the care they need. I know because I was one of them. (Jessy Rosales, storyteller with YouthTestify )

When Jessy Rosales [a storyteller with Youth Testify] was a sophomore at the University of California-Riverside, she had a boyfriend and was taking birth control pills. Then, out of nowhere, she started feeling sick. “I just thought it was the stomach flu,” she said. “It turns out I was pregnant.” Rosales was sure she was not ready to have a baby. She wanted a medication abortion that would involve taking one pill at a health clinic, and a second one at home a day or two later to induce a miscarriage. “I just wanted the intimacy of dealing with it on my own, in the privacy of my own home,” she said. “And being able to cry if I wanted to cry or just being able to curl up in my bed right away.” Public university health centers in California do not perform abortions. But state lawmakers are expected to pass a bill in the coming weeks that would require health centers at all 32 state campuses to provide medication abortions. If the bill becomes law, it would be the first of its kind in the nation.

"Oftentimes, I have walked through a scanner and the machine picks up the metal in my bra hooks, and then I have to be unnecessarily patted down. It's inefficient, annoying, and invasive. Had I been a victim of physical assault, which many transgender folks are due to the nature of our social status, this would likely be a highly triggering experience." (Ameera, Muslim Youth Council member)

"But Advocates for Youth's Sage Carson, an expert on sexual misconduct nationwide, couldn't think of a city that provides this type of data for K-12 schools. She also cautioned against believing that such data is the panacea. “I think this suggestion would not get to the solution that parents are hoping for,” says Carson, who’s also the manager of Know Your IX. “We should be pushing our schools to do climate surveys as well as train faculty staff and students on sexual misconduct reporting.”

“With the changes in the Title X rules and Planned Parenthood being forced out, anti-abortion and abstinence-only fake health centers will be emboldened to target even more young people, especially those young people who are specifically needing low-cost care,” Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, director of Public Policy at Advocates for Youth, tells SELF.

According to Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, director of public policy for Advocates for Youth, some 39.1% — or over 1.5 million people — relying on Title X are under age 25. "This hugely impacts a wide range of folks, including young people, low income folks, and folks of color,” Rhodes tells Elite Daily. "Those who are most marginalized when it comes to accessing health care, and also those who are most marginalized when it comes to health disparities, are often the ones who are accessing Title X clinics and clinics that receive Title X funding." Rhodes is concerned that the absence of major players such as Planned Parenthood will create space for misinformation or inadequate care to spread — and funding that can be redirected to incomplete services. She says that, anecdotally, a lot of the young people who Advocates for Youth work with access their reproductive health care at Planned Parenthood. "With the rise of fake health centers ... that are strategically placed near universities and college campuses," she says, "this opens the door to those fake health centers or crisis pregnancy centers to be receiving more Title X dollars — and opening the door for young people to not be receiving the information and services that they need."

"There are a lot of fighters out here, working for a world where parents love and respect their children; where they listen to us, not silence or belittle us. It sounds like you’re a fighter too — you’re fighting for your right to be the gender you are. Keep going. We have your back, your school has your back, and together, we are all going to end the ignorance and transphobia that keeps transgender people from fully living our lives." -Max, Student Organizer

"There’s a tremendous update on a breaking news win; and we also get the inside scoop from Kamilah Tisdale of Advocates for Youth about the important movement to #ProtectTransHealth in a time when the Trump Administration is ridiculously and harmfully rolling back anti-discrimination laws. "

Preston Mitchum, senior legal and international policy analyst for Advocates for Youth, said people should ask why law enforcement is using public funds to “put queer men at risk” in the criminal justice system. “These queer men are overall entering situations they believe are consensual and that by and large are consensual but for there being a plain-clothes officer who is actually setting up a situation for queer men to succumb to,” he said. “So it isn’t a stretch of the imagination that this is intended to police their behavior … I can see these situations occurring more and more, especially in bigger cities.”

“Unfortunately, we know many LGBTQ young people, especially youth of color, are left in the dark when they ask questions about sex, relationships, and growing up,” said Ortiz-Fonseca. “The goal of the series is to equip LGBTQ young people with information, and make sure they know that they are deserving of safe, happy, and healthy lives.” At a time when the LGBTQ community faces continuous harassment and discrimination, a show like Kikis with Louie is more crucial than ever. The first episode of Kikis with Louie offers a candid conversation about on-screen representation, trans-erasure at the height of the AIDS crisis and the need for sex ed to be LGBTQ-inclusive. Check out the first episode of the series below, starring Pose and Saturday Church star Mj Rodriguez.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 17 is around the age when most young people in the United States have sex for the first time. Therefore, middle school age (before sexual actions may be occurring) is a good time to start talking about safe sex and birth control, says Brittany McBride, MPH, senior program manager of education at Advocates For Youth. ....Be affirmative and honest. “Always, always affirm your young people,” McBride says. “They're trying to make sure that they're normal.” And above all, listen, don't lecture.

So why aren’t young people filling their prescriptions for these very treatable STIs, which can cause such serious health problems? Rebecca Thimmesch, a Program Associate at Advocates for Youth, tells Bustle that the whole system around getting a prescription just doesn’t work for many young people. “There’s just a lot of issues with our current system that fill young people with a sense of dread either about getting tested, filling a prescription, or even asking to get tested,” Thimmesch tells Bustle. “So those are big hurdles, particularly for young person who is working in addition to being in school or is from a marginalized community, like young people who are experiencing homeless or young people who are uninsured. There are just a lot of additional factors that make it harder.”