In 2026, promises of comprehensive sex education have weakened. With the overturning of Roe in 2022, women’s lives are in danger due to restricted access to reproductive health care across Louisiana. In September 2025, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast (PPGC) ceased operations in Louisiana, shutting down its New Orleans clinic on Claiborne Avenue. The President of PPGC Melaney Linton expressed that the closure resulted from “relentless political assaults,” preventing Louisiana affiliates from serving clients.
In 2018, Heide Winston founded Geaux Girl!, a local non-profit magazine created for and with New Orleans teen girls to combat the significant lack of sex education. Since the subject is not mandated in Louisiana public schools, each issue of the free print and online magazine features sex ed topics among other important issues, from answers to anonymous questions to articles about puberty and sexual health by local adult experts. Geaux Girl!’s Teen Advisory Board, a group of girls from diverse backgrounds across the New Orleans area, direct the magazine’s content through writing and interviewing, voting on submissions, and exchanging ideas. Find Heide’s oral history below to hear more about her own story and Geaux Girl!.
Spring 2019 Issue of Geaux Girl!
Local religious organizations provide their own sex ed programs. “Our Whole Lives,” or OWL, is a comprehensive sex ed curricula for young people, teenagers, and older adults. Developed in 1999 by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ, OWL is used nationwide and has a few New Orleans-specific programs. The program encourages youth to articulate their own priorities and values. The curricula provides developmentally-appropriate and science-based information about anatomy, sexually transmitted infections, contraception and pregnancy. OWL includes optional faith materials for churches, but the program is secular, welcoming non-religious community members to also participate. Churches have the option to charge for OWL, but typically, they offer it for a small donation that covers snacks and supplies.
New Orleans public schools continue to face obstacles, namely training and resources, in facilitating sex ed. In an almost all-charter public school system, no mandate requires charter authorizers to report if they are teaching sex ed, making it impossible to know how many public school students are receiving sex ed in Orleans Parish. Schools that have the capacity to facilitate sex ed can seek resources from the New Orleans Health Department. NOHD provides free training to middle and high school staff on comprehensive sex ed.
Even before sex ed’s official inclusion in schools in the 1980, the subject was tenacious. From the 1970s sex ed ban in classrooms to current organizations barred from entering school premises, challenges to comprehensive sex ed persist and the subject continues to create intense debate.