California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed a bill Sunday that would have provided free condoms in all of the state’s public schools serving grades 7-12, citing lack of funding for the initiative.
The bill, authored by state Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D), would have mandated that the schools make condoms available free to students and also ban retailers from refusing to sell the prophylactics to minors. While Newsom supports the idea behind the bill, he said, the funding for the initiative simply isn’t there.
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“While evidence-based strategies, like increasing access to condoms, are important to supporting improved adolescent sexual health, this bill would create an unfunded mandate to public schools that should be considered in the annual budget process,” the governor said in his veto announcement.
His administration has already worked with the legislature to close a $30 billion budget shortfall, Newsom said. “This year, however, the Legislature sent me bills outside of this budget process that, if all enacted, would add nearly $19 billion of unaccounted costs in the budget, of which $11 billion would be ongoing,” he explained.
Menjivar told HuffPost that the veto “set us back in the fight for sexual health equity,” noting that youth of color and those in rural areas will be most impacted by the decision. Newsom’s funding argument also falls flat, she argued.
“Governor Newsom stated this veto is based on funding, but California has extensive funding for STI prevention, community partners are ready and able to provide condoms to these programs in their service areas, and we spend millions of dollars on STI health care annually when prevention costs far less than treatment,” she said.
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The bill had support from the Adolescent Health Working Group, a San Francisco-based organization focused on youth health care access, which cited declining rates of condom use among sexually active teens.
According to a 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey, nearly half of sexually active teens say they didn’t use a condom during their last sexual intercourse, and more than 94% say they’ve never done testing for sexually transmitted infections. Most teens said they didn’t use other highly effective forms of birth control, either, including birth control pills and implants, which prevent pregnancy but not STIs.
Despite those figures, teen birth rates in California and the country as a whole have been on a downward trajectory. The U.S. Department of Health and Human services reported that in 2020, the rate was down 8% from the year prior, and down 75% from the peak in 1991.
However, STI rates are on the rise among both teens and the overall adult population ― something STI experts attribute in part to the COVID-19 pandemic cannibalizing health care resources.
