Sexual education- Panama’s great divide

THOUSANDS of anti-sex education protesters who  marched on the presidential palace  in an event organized by the Catholic Church and episcopal groups, aimed at  a bill seeking to introduces a measure of sex education in Panama schools  have won the latest round of the battle.

Although some 46 civic groups had met earlier in the day, Wednesday July 13 supporting Bill 61, and pointed out the need for Church and State to be separated, the ruling bloc of the Panamenista Party, whose leader, President Juan Carlos Varela is an active church supporter, was listening to the marchers.

The bloc  reported on Thursday, that it will  file a motion for the controversial bill on sexual and reproductive health education to be  returned to first debate to  the Health Commission of the National Assembly, stalling an attempt that has been debated endlessly since the closing years of the last century.

There  are over  32 child and teenage pregnacies  in Panama every day according to Ministry of Health figures which do not include those delivered   in private hospitals and social security, and  there is a major increase in sexualy transmitted diseases’s  including HIVamong teens.