Legislators are too often willing to sacrifice the health and well-being of children in the face of pressure from religious lobbyists. Issues generally covered in SRE are central to all children and young people’s well-being and to their healthy development as they grow up. It is therefore a betrayal of children’s rights that many children, particularly in religious schools across Europe, are often denied their right to objective teaching on issues such as contraception, safe sex, sexuality and abortion.
Article 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child calls on States to ensure that children have access to information and material from a diversity of national and international sources aimed at the promotion of their social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health.