KUALA LUMPUR, MARCH 14 — Sex education will not prevent illicit sex even if it helps reduce illegitimate births, a PAS lawmaker said today.
PAS information chief and Temerloh MP Nasrudin Hassan said his claim meant sex education only treated the outcomes of premarital sex, not the act itself.
“Some suggested to have sex education in schools to teach safe sex and all that. But that, maybe to curb out-of-wedlock pregnancies, but it won’t help the illicit sex problem,” Nasrudin said when debating the King’s Address in the Dewan Rakyat.
“In fact, at one time, I saw an advertisement in Medan Mara in Kuala Lumpur when I was passing by that area. The advertisement was put up by an agency advertising the use of condoms. In the advertisement, a man asks a woman to go the beach and that woman said “no condom, no way”.
“Meaning, this is just to (advertise) the use of condoms, not to prevent illegitimate sex or adultery,” Nasrudin added.
He went on to add that if adultery and illicit sex continues, the country will have to face the wrath of Allah SWT.
In a joint statement last year, the Malaysian Paediatric Association and College of Paediatrics, Academy of Medicine of Malaysia said that sex education should be taught in Malaysia from preschool to keep young children safe from sexual abuse.
The statement was issued following news of the large-scale sexual abuses of 22 Malaysian children as young as six months at the hands of Briton Richard Huckle.
The organisations asserted that sex education that focuses on teaching children how to cope when faced with sexual predators has proven to be effective in dealing with paedophiles.
Last year, Utusan Online also cited Health Ministry statistics for 2016, that showed 28.8 per cent of 13,831 teenagers aged between 10 and 19, or 3,980 girls, had children out of wedlock.
Teen pregnancies were most common in Sabah at 3,084 cases, followed by Sarawak (2,910), Selangor (1,461), Johor (1,319) and Pahang (940).
A 2015 survey on youths’ sexual and reproductive health by Durex and Perspective Strategies released in May, found that the government’s abstinence-based sex education has failed to help raise awareness of safe sex among a majority of young people.
