Here’s a fun tidbit for you:

You’re not the only one who might have been grossed out by sex education.

Oscar-winner Helen Mirren revealed that her sex education experience at 14 was a bit too revealing.

This film comes on, which is a midwives’ educational film. There is a close-up of a woman having a baby… it’s bloody and disgusting. Within 30 seconds, two boys had fainted.’

Mirren says the film put her off childbirth for life.

In light of the recent debate about a Maine middle school’s decision to offer contraceptives, it’s interesting to learn about the faces behind the debate. The coordinator of the Portland schools nurses, Andrea Rowe, is also Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe’s wife.

Rowe, 53, said she was prepared for controversy when an advisory board that reviews sex education programming in the Portland schools decided that birth control prescriptions should be made available at the middle school health clinic.

But she did not expect a national debate.

It’s not clear to me that Rowe was actually the driving force behind the decision, but her and her husband have been drawn into the debate, nevertheless.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution posted an editorial titled, “Are schools encouraging students to have sex?” with two opposing sides.

The debate was spurred by the recent decision by a Maine middle school’s decision to offer contraceptives to students.

“Students have enough internal pressure toward sex; they need authority figures to help them fight it, not help them give into it!” wrote columnist Shaunti Feldhah.

The counterpoint by columnist Andrea Cornell Sarvady included the following:

Pregnant teens? No one wants that. Yet I doubt the solution lies with people like Pam Stenzel, a Bush appointee to the Department of Health and Human Service’s task force for abstinence education guidelines. Here’s Pam, when she thinks she’s only among “friends,” addressing the effectiveness of an abstinence-only curriculum at a religious convention: “I don’t care if it works, because at the end of the day… I’m answering to God.”

Who do you agree with? Is providing contraceptives legitimizing sex for minors and even pushing them to have sex at an earlier age?