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.
