0:00:03 – Speaker 1
Hey, this is Mandy and Kim with nextTalk, where we are passionate about keeping kids safe in the digital world.
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0:00:36 – Speaker 1
Hey, nextTalk parents. today we have a special guest on the show today. I’m so excited for this show. I met Joni. She is an R in in our community and I met her through our church. Everything that is on the show is going to help you have better conversations about sex and STDs and the culture around that all of that today. But, joni, take a moment. I want you to introduce yourself and tell us about the organization that you work for.
0:01:06 – Speaker 3
Hi, good morning. My name is Joni Eaton. I’m the RN Nurse Manager at the Shares Center, which stands for Sexual Health and Reproductive Education. We are a pregnancy center but our focus has changed a little bit more to the sexual health and reproductive education, because we feel like really to educate people and empower them with knowledge and truth will lead them to make better decisions for their life.
0:01:30 – Speaker 1
And one of the things you mentioned to me, joni, as we were talking, is the shift from your. you recently changed your name from Abordy Pregnancy Care Center to the Shares Center, and part of that change of name was because, even though you want to be there for women and women’s health, you also wanted to expand the conversation more to include the boys and the guys?
0:01:53 – Speaker 3
Yes, very much, because they are often neglected in this whole discussion, especially with unplanned pregnancies. They are left out of the discussion, but they are also left out a lot of the discussion on STDs. So we want to incorporate them into this, because they’re affected just as much as women, and so we want to empower them to Well and they have a responsibility to be proactive and safe and make sure they are educated about their role in all this, And I think so many we’ve talked before so many times.
0:02:27 – Speaker 1
The girls are the only conversation in this sex ed conversation, And that needs to change in our culture.
0:02:33 – Speaker 3
Most definitely if you go back to like the purity rings and all that that was focused on just the girl And we need to focus also on the young men.
0:02:41 – Speaker 1
So tell me about the services you offer at the Shares Center.
0:02:46 – Speaker 3
We are a faith based nonprofit pregnancy center. So we offer pregnancy testing, first trimester sonograms, we offer STD testing, std treatment, we offer STD education. We also offer post abortion healing. We also provide prenatal classes, parenting classes, which the prenatal classes are just to help young men and women know what to expect through their pregnancy and know what to come. And we want so very much to incorporate the men in that Sometimes just the women get the education, but the men need it as well. I love that.
0:03:23 – Speaker 1
I love your mission. I love that you changed the name to bring in the men more. I think that is so critical. Okay, so we’ve had a couple meetings gone to lunch and I have just learned so much from Joni. Every time we have sat down she’s given me some new information and I brought it home and had some good talks about sex and STDs with my kids, like things that I didn’t know, and so I was like, oh my gosh, everybody needs to have a little lunch with Joni. So this is what this is. So the first thing that I want to start out with is the last couple conversations we’ve had. You gave me some hope in the sense of there was a statistics that you shared that showed a decrease in the overall teens having sex. Can you share that with us and that information for our audience?
0:04:11 – Speaker 3
So overall there is a decrease in teens having sex compared to what you may be told, that everybody’s doing it. There is a decrease of now only about 29% of high school students are currently sexually active And that’s a CDC stat, correct, Right? All these are from CDC or the Texas Department of Health And you can go to their websites and put in. The way they get their statistics real quick is from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey And they send out this survey. The students do this survey. They don’t identify themselves or anything. So it’s like 99 questions And nine of the questions are basically on sex And the students fill this out. So that’s where they get their statistics from. Cdc uses the same thing as the Texas Department of Health.
0:05:03 – Speaker 1
Awesome. Thank you for explaining that to us how we can find that data. I know when Joni shared this with me, I was like this is so hopeful. This is how I’m going to open the show, because we are going to get into the bad stuff in a minute and the negative stuff of what she’s seeing, But I think this is really great. This created a lot of good conversations in my home about. I know you feel like everyone is doing it, but the data shows different, And so the kids who are not doing it aren’t saying they’re not doing it because they don’t want to be made fun of or bullied. So you need to be assured Our kids are growing up in a generation where they want numbers and they want the science, which I love. I love that, And so this really helps in this conversation about. Only 29% of your peers are sexually active is what the data is showing, And so encourage them with that information.
0:05:52 – Speaker 3
The other thing is that we need to make sure that our children understand the difference between sexual behavior and sexual intercourse, because some mistakenly believe that as long as they’re not having sexual intercourse, that they’re not having sex, and so they really need to understand what they mean by sexual activity. That being said, in the statistics and in this questionnaire, the only thing that’s asked of them is have they had sexual intercourse? It’s not asking have they had a sexual activity? So they need to realize it and be enlightened that sexual activity also leads to a lot of repercussions, not just sexual intercourse.
0:06:34 – Speaker 1
OK, i love this distinction that you just said here, because I see a lot of parents upset that in sex ed in middle school especially, that their kids are learning the definition of oral sex and anal sex and outer course Right, in addition to vaginal intercourse of course. But they get really upset about the oral sex and the anal sex And for me that doesn’t outrage me, because I feel like kids need to know that sex, and a lot of them don’t. A lot of them, and I think we talked about that even with a girl-boy relationship you’re seeing, oh, I can have anal sex because I can’t get pregnant, and so that’s what we’re seeing as far as the spread of STDs, correct.
0:07:19 – Speaker 3
Correct And they believe that oral sex is safe because they’re not having that penile vaginal sex. So they think oral sex is safe and they’re not going to get STDs. They’re not going to get pregnant that way. Yes, but STDs are very much transmitted by oral sex And anal sex puts them even at higher risk just because of the anatomy.
0:07:45 – Speaker 1
Yeah, i like what you said, and we also talked about why teens are having a decrease in sex. The stats do show that but, like you said, they may be defining sexual intercourse differently. So they may be like hooking up online and doing some sort of video with each other and masturbating. They could be doing that, i mean. So there could be other ways that they are exploring, right.
0:08:12 – Speaker 3
One of the things is there’s different things. With the quarantine that has happened. A lot of people are, of course, at home, but it has gotten more of us on our devices, so there’s more access, more time for access to pornography. No, you’re not going to get an STD through the computer. However, those things change your sexual appetite, they change your sexual boundaries And they change your heart, and so it’s not just STDs and pregnancies that need to be guarded. Their hearts need to be guarded And their spirit needs to be guarded.
0:08:53 – Speaker 1
I love how you put that. That is right along our nextTalk philosophy of protect your heart and mind, because it’s going to affect your future relationships. One other thing that you mentioned to me is, yes, we’re seeing an overall decrease in the stats of sexual activity, but when they are having sex, what are you seeing?
0:09:13 – Speaker 3
OK, i’m seeing a couple of things, but the main thing is they’re having more sexual partners. Also, they’re engaging in more high risk activity. But what I’m also seeing is them having sex with same sex and the opposite sex, which also puts them in a higher risk activity. And with all this gender identity and all the conversation and all the inclusion of binary and identification and all that, they’re experimenting more, and they’re experimenting more with multiple partners or same sex partners.
0:09:49 – Speaker 1
OK, so when they are having sex, it’s multiple partners, different sexes, lots of different, experimenting more than you’ve seen in the past.
0:09:58 – Speaker 3
Correct And, that being said, we need to remember that what I see in my clinic is those that are in there for testing and for treatment, so that’s a smaller pool than the whole pool of young people Does that make sense.
0:10:15 – Speaker 1
Yeah, and I think this is important. You also said, when they have anal sex and partners of different genders, that it puts them at higher risk. Can you explain what you mean from that from a healthcare perspective?
0:10:29 – Speaker 3
Sure. So anal sex is very vascular, okay. So there’s very high risk of tearing of tissue, and the problem is that the tissue is very friable, it is very tender, and so it can bleed easily. So whenever you have an area that is bleeding, it’s very much easier to transmit a virus or bacteria.
0:10:53 – Speaker 1
Okay, this is a conversation that we need to have with our older kids. When we start having these conversations, they need to realize that their higher risk is with anal sex. That is true for boy on boy or girl and boy Higher risk for STDs because of the lining is so thin and there’s more likely to bleed. Right, correct, okay, and we talked a lot about HPV. That’s a big deal, right, because you may not know, you have it for years down the road and it leads to cancer, right? So tell our audience a little bit, educate us about HPV, because I think that’s a big one that we hear a lot about and some people just don’t know specifically what it is.
0:11:36 – Speaker 3
Right. Well, so this is a conversation that’s fairly new in the last 10, 15 years because they didn’t realize how many types of HPV. There’s like a hundred types of HPV, but there are nine that are really more susceptible to causing cancer And so those nine most people, when they contract the HPV virus, your body flushes it out, but it doesn’t always happen, it doesn’t always automatically go away, And that HPV human papilloma virus they found and cause a lot of cancers. So it causes 91% of the cervical cancers that are found or caused by HPV, 63% of the penile cancers, 91% of anal cancer comes from HPV. So there is the whole vaccination. I’m sure everybody’s seen the commercial with mom. Did you know mom? dad, did you know? So the conversation comes back to the way that you get these particular HPV is through sexual activity.
0:12:37 – Speaker 1
You mentioned cervical cancer, penile cancer, oral cancer, but also throat cancer, right, and that is from the oral sex And that’s about a 60% oral oral pharyngeal cancer.
0:12:49 – Speaker 3
Yes, it’s from oral sex. So this HPV. For a long time we only vaccinated girls because they thought at the time it was only affecting women, and so that’s why they only vaccinated women. Then they discovered how it’s led to the anal sex and the oral pharyngeal sex, and so now they are vaccinating males as well.
0:13:10 – Speaker 1
Okay, this is really good information for our parents at home who are digging in and having these difficult conversations. And, again, this is why it’s so important that kids understand anal sex and oral sex and, outer course, they are all sex and they can get STDs from that, and I think this conversation is just so critical. One thing that you told me about is that when you have somebody come in, you take a questionnaire and you ask them some questions And I just want you to tell me, like what you generally see on what you have learned.
0:13:43 – Speaker 3
Well, what I have learned? again, i’m only questioning the ones that are sexually active, but I’ve seen an increase in the number of partners. They can’t count how many sex partners they’ve had, so they don’t know. I’ve also seen an increase in same sex partners, also in pornography. A lot of them participate in pornography, and pornography increases their sexual appetite, and so we really need to be talking to our kids about what pornography does to them and how it changes their boundaries, because that more and more, things become normal or acceptable or exciting that normally wouldn’t have.
0:14:25 – Speaker 1
One of the things we talk a lot about nextTalk is how porn has changed and I think, because of what you’re telling me, it’s like validating what we’ve been seeing on the front lines working with these kids. It causes them to experiment way more, question their sexuality, and everything that we’re seeing on the front lines is matching up what you’re seeing in your clinic. Yeah, absolutely Okay. you told me about a time that you called to report an STD case and you learned something new and I thought it was just a really good story to tell our listeners.
0:15:01 – Speaker 3
It is and this goes back to what we’ve seen in the clinic was I had a client come in and be tested and when they were positive, i have to generally get all their partners in the last six months to report to the state. That’s a law, that’s legal, full disclosure to the client that I have to do this. But this one particular client had five or six partners. They knew a first name and they knew an approximate age, but they didn’t know a phone number. They didn’t know an address, they didn’t know a last name. So when I was filling out the report, i called the Texas Department of Health and I talked to our surveillance person there and I said I feel like I can’t fill out this report because they don’t give me this information.
What the client had already told me is they met him on Snapchat. So when I said that to the surveillance officer, she said, oh, a Snapchat hookup, yeah, that’s very common and I did not know this. But a lot of young people are connecting on Snapchat to meet somewhere and have sex. So they don’t have to know any information about that person. So they don’t know anything about them, they don’t know anything about their past and they don’t know anything about their sexual history And what?
0:16:17 – Speaker 1
a danger. It puts our kids into being trafficked. I mean, not only they could be hooking up with what they think is a 16 year old boy, and it’s a sex trafficker, and now they’re in a very serious situation.
0:16:30 – Speaker 3
That’s a whole other bag of worms coming in. There is the sex trafficking and, as we know, that is really a huge, huge problem.
0:16:40 – Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, and we’re all about trying to prevent that. We’re in that preventative phase. You know where we are trying to have the conversations now, just like what you guys are doing through education to prevent some of this stuff. Okay, so we’ve talked about HPV a little bit. I want to talk, I want to dive into a little bit more about STDs, because I think the more scientific based healthcare information that parents have about STDs, the better conversations we can have with our kids at home and they’re factual and correct. We want to make sure we’re always giving our kids the right information Correct. You know we have to be a trustworthy like source for them, and so this is very important. So I want to talk about the top three STDs that you see or that you have to help kids with, and I want you to briefly describe each one and tell us why it’s so important to cover this information with our kids.
0:17:34 – Speaker 3
Well, the first two are Chlamydia and gonorrhea, and I grouped them together because they’re tested together and they often have the same symptoms, which is just very mild or none at all. The problem with these two is that they cause, they can cause, in the female, pelvic inflammatory disease, which can lead to the destruction or scar tissue forming in their ovaries and their fallopian tubes, which may lead to infertility later. And so, as they have found out, a lot of women whose infertility issues are caused by a Chlamydia infection that they had much earlier in their life, that they knew nothing about because it was asymptomatic. Now some do have symptoms. They’re usually mild. For females it’s usually a vaginal discharge, for men it’s a penile discharge, but it’s usually not doesn’t cause a lot of itching. That’s usually a yeast infection. It usually is just some a little bit of a discharge. Sometimes, if it’s already gotten to a pelvic inflammatory disease, we’ll have pain, a lot of pelvic pain in a female.
0:18:47 – Speaker 1
So with these top two, chlamydia and gonorrhea, they’re probably much overlooked so that the kids don’t get treatment, so they can be sexually active, not getting treatment that could affect them in the future and they’re spreading it.
0:19:02 – Speaker 3
Yes, the other problem with gonorrhea is they’re both treated with antibiotics, but gonorrhea has gotten more and more resistant. We’ve had to double the amount of antibiotic that we give them in order to treat this.
0:19:17 – Speaker 1
Is that because gonorrhea is increasing and we’re seeing more of it? Or why is it becoming? do we know why it’s becoming resistant?
0:19:24 – Speaker 3
Well, any, bacteria that just keeps going and keeps going. If somebody’s had an infection, you know, just like you hear, with the COVID, things mutate, they change, they get stronger And a lot of it has to do with not being treated. Or you know, in our society right now we get antibiotics for a lot of things, we get antibiotics for ear infections and stuff. So bacteria gets more and more resistant to those antibiotics And that’s what’s happened with the gonorrhea. Now in the clinic, yes, i’ve seen a little more gonorrhea than I have the previous couple of years, but overall the statistics in the county aren’t that much higher in the last two years. But they you know, all the statistics that you get are behind about two years because the time it takes to accumulate all the data.
0:20:16 – Speaker 1
Okay. So Chlamydia and gonorrhea. What is your third one that you wanna tell parents about?
0:20:22 – Speaker 3
Well, the HPV that we have discussed okay, The HPV is a real big deal. Our parents really need to be having a discussion with our kids about the vaccine.
0:20:31 – Speaker 1
I think it’s very important for parents to stay calm if your kid says I want the vaccine because we can’t rush to. Oh my gosh, they’re sexually active and then go into crazy mode, right, so we have to be really careful with it. But I do think it could be a good way to bring up the conversation like that And I teach that to students.
0:20:49 – Speaker 3
When I do, when I go out to the schools, I teach them. This is a very good way to get that conversation going with your parents. We heard about this at school. I wanna know what you think of that.
0:21:00 – Speaker 1
And let’s talk about that. You talk at schools through our Sex Ed program locally.
0:21:06 – Speaker 3
I think you serve on our board too, or our committee Student Health Advisory Committee and I am on the Sexual Health Education Committee, where we’re revisiting what kind of curriculum is used in the schools Awesome, Well, i’m so glad we have you in our local school district helping make those decisions and guide them.
0:21:27 – Speaker 1
One thing you told me is, when you speak in schools, you tell the story of two NBA basketball players and two different choices they made with their lives, and you mentioned a book which I haven’t had a chance to read yet, but I want you to tell our audience about that because I loved how you framed it for the students, and I think a lot of our listeners are worldwide and they’re not gonna have their kids in your classrooms learning about this, and so they may wanna use it as a conversation starter in their own home.
0:22:00 – Speaker 3
I tell them the story about Magic Johnson and Nacey Green, who were both basketball players that played for the LA Lakers during their time. I think AC Green also played for the Phoenix Suns. We’ll start with Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson was a basketball player in the peak of his career and he used to talk about how many women he’d had sexual relations with. It was probably in the thousands That was considered because he was a big, famous basketball star. That was considered kind of admirable to some people. And what happened was one day Magic Johnson went to the doctor and found out he was HIV positive. Magic Johnson had to go home and tell his wife, cookie, that he’d been tested positive for HIV when Cookie was her very first pregnancy, and so he had explained to her that he had exposed her and their unborn baby. Now they have done well and have had lots of medication, and I believe that the baby and mom are fine. Magic Johnson has not developed AIDS, but he’s had to undergo a lot of medical treatment to prevent that.
Okay, ac Green, also at the peak of his career when he was a young man, had made a decision that he was not going to be sexually active until he got married. So as he went up there as MBA career and he was the Iron Man was often taunted by fellow teammates and other people. So they would actually send prostitutes to his hotel room and try to tempt him. Because that was considered so abnormal. To be abstinent to you married. Ac Green didn’t marry till he was 40 years old. But the contrast is that AC Green never had to go home to a wife who was pregnant and say I’ve exposed you to HIV. He never had to. That He could be assured when he got married that he did not have those because he’d abstained all his life and he’d made that commitment as a young man.
0:24:06 – Speaker 1
I love that story. You know there’s a verse in Proverbs I think it’s 31, and it says it’s talking about a woman honoring her husband all of her days. Right, and I think about that. With men and women who choose to wait until they get married, they are honoring the spouse They haven’t even met yet by making that decision as a young person. Yes, and I think that’s a great conversation starter for our kids. Here’s two different NBA stars, two different paths they took and the consequences of the choices.
0:24:41 – Speaker 3
And this isn’t. I want to make sure nobody thinks that I’m downing Magic Johnson. I’m sure he’s a very nice man and it’s just about choices is the only difference. It’s the choices that they made. Ac Green wrote a book called Today’s Heroes. Today’s Heroes is about abstinence, that it’s more about the moral and dignity of men. Awesome.
0:25:04 – Speaker 1
Joni, I just thank you for all the work you’re doing. You’re helping educate parents. You’re helping educate kids. You’re on the front lines, helping these kids in crisis who are scared and sometimes don’t have anybody to talk to. You may be the only person they’ve ever confided in about their sexual activity and I just pray God gives you wisdom to speak into those kids. I just I thank you for all you’re doing. Anybody out there who wants to support the Share Center, contact you, learn more about what you guys are doing. What is your website and maybe your email address?
0:25:38 – Speaker 3
Email address is Joni J-O-A-N-I-E at BolvertyPregnancyorg. And the website that we go to. You can just type in the Share Center and it will take you right to our website.
0:25:52 – Speaker 1
You know, in light of the most recent Texas heartbeat bill that got passed, you know I’m praying that a lot of people this, your organization, grows because of it. You know, these people in crisis, men and women, will come to you and you guys can really help them with their healthcare needs and with their emotional needs as well.
0:26:11 – Speaker 3
Yes, and we are hoping that through education and through just open conversation with them, that we can lead them to healthier, more fulfilling lives. Our motto is that we want to promote an abundant life. I love that, so much.
0:26:26 – Speaker 1
Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for all you’re doing. I just loved having you on the show. Thank you, joni, thank you.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
