Must-See Video: “I Have Sex”

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Not to blow your minds or anything, but young people have sex. And quite a few of them are pissed about the proposed budget cuts to Planned Parenthood, which has been basically deemed a giant abortion factory instead of a comprehensive sex education advocate and family planning provider. In reality, Planned Parenthood offers many health and gynecological services, STD and STI screenings, cancer screenings, birth control, and counseling, and students don’t want those services taken away.

I Have Sex,” is a video produced by students at Wesleyan University. Posted last week, it has rapidly garnered more than 238,000 views on YouTube. The idea has spread to other schools, including Bard College; Oberlin College; Elmira College in Trumansburg, New York; and also to Americans studying abroad in Equador and France. Sex isn’t the only thing young people have, of course. They also have mad social-media skills, which is partly why the videos have gone viral. The Wesleyan organizers attracted more than 30,000 people to their “event” on Facebook, and have launched a proper fan page that’s gaining followers as well.

Perhaps the video’s most telling tidbit is its camparison between what the government spends on tax breaks for oil companies ($2.5 billion) versus how much it pays to keep Planned Parenthood afloat ($75 million).

You can read more about the student-led Planned Parenthood campaign here, but first check out the video below. Get inspired, get informed, and realize that young people getting laid isn’t cause for some great moral panic. Axing sex education and reproductive services, on the other hand, is.

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Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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