Platform 51

News

Friday, 3 February 2012
Woman of the week - Lisa Hallgarten

Revolutionising, normalising education surrounding sex

 

This week we proudly present Lisa Hallgarten as our woman of the week. She is the director of Education For Choice - an organisation enabling young people to access impartial information regarding pregnancy and abortions.

Lisa has long been campaigning for young people to access the facts on sexual reproduction. In all of her work, she stresses her belief in choice and that the only way someone can make a personal choice is once they've been offered neutral information. This is one of the reasons why she condemns anti-abortion 'charities', as they do not often provide scientific evidence as information, but rather use ideology as a reason to 'educate' vulnerable women, relying on morals rather than facts. Furthermore, Lisa stresses the necessity of voluntary organisations to provide support and structure for the mother and child before and after the birth, particularly at the moment as cuts are being put in to place in the health and social sector. Lisa highlights flaws in the actual structure of anti-abortion groups, as they do not campaign for better sex education, neither do they provide realistic and long-term support for the mother and child.

Education for Choice has recently become a project within Brook, a young people's sexual health charity. This move is bound to be extremely positive, as both organisations are closely allied in their thinking and action, and Brook will undoubtedly benefit from Education For Choice's specific knowledge on teaching about choice, pregnancy and abortion. This recent partnership will hopefully mean wider access of impartial education to both young girls and boys.

Brook's recent campaign Sex:Positive is about demanding a modern and current policy for teaching sex and relationships education in schools. This would ensure all schools have properly trained teachers, will dedicate time to educate students on safe sex (a quarter say they have never received it) which will hopefully be tailored to suit heterosexual, homosexual and asexual relationships.

The necessity for programmes such as these has been made all the more apparent by the recent threats to neutral education in the U.K. Platform 51 think it is absolutely vital that there are sensible and practical campaigners like Lisa Hallgarten to fight for our rights, our freedom of education and our freedom of information.