Why Did Sex Ed Never Mention That Getting Pregnant Could Be Hard?

It was 2004 and all the cool girls in my Arizona middle school were wearing Abercrombie miniskirts. I was sitting with the other 7th graders in a science classroom, attempting to avoid eye contact when the sex-ed instructor slapped one hand on top of the other and sternly warned us that genital warts could “stack like pancakes.” My face flushed. The instructor proceeded to take us through a brief description of puberty and menstruation, a quick-and-dirty primer on sex and pregnancy, and a deeply detailed monologue on sexually transmitted diseases, with pictures of gonorrhea and herpes enlarged and projected on the wall. I walked out of the classroom embarrassed but armed with what felt like new, hard-won knowledge: It was my job, I understood, to be on guard against sex and disease and pr