WHILE convalescing this week, I finally got round to reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – a dystopian meditation on reproduction in a theocratic post-America.

It seemed like a good choice of reading material, but I soon realised my error. There were too many uncomfortable echoes of today predicted in this 30-year- old novel. Reading doesn’t feel much like escapism when sentences continually yank you back into reality, causing reflection on the society’s sexual distaste. Under Trump, we could very well see the repeal of Roe vs Wade in America – something likely unthinkable at the time of writing. Novelists write to expose the dark consequences of our alternate realities – but more often than not they serve as an accidental blueprint for the right. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Last week, sex made its way into parliament. A matter of sexual freedom to be precise. The latest blow to what should be an inalienable right comes courtesy of our munificent friends in the Conservative party. In a terrific act of vandalism against young people, they, along with five Labour MPs, voted to block compulsory sex education in England and Wales. This in the face of studies that continue to show the enormous value of quality sex education. Education that delays first sex for both genders and increases the use of contraception. Education that encourages healthier and more informed choices in partner selection and reproductive health matters.

With further parallels of Atwood’s slow-burning horror story, it seems faith is the reason the bill was pulled. Simon Hoare, MP for North Dorset, argued for a "legislative comfort blanket" to protect faith schools who oppose homosexuality. Sensible, because of course what young people need to interpret the adult world is a shroud warped and wefted of idiocy and ignorance. The kid-gloves handling of the faith issue puts everyone in harm’s way. You can say you don’t believe in rabbits, capitalism or the moon, but they’ll still exist regardless of your dismissal. You cannot educate young people well through silence and the withholding of information – moral hygiene and appeasing the gods aren’t a justifiable excuse for failing to make these vital reforms. Health is a human right, as is education. Sex is human. Sex education is a human right. Exceptions and opt-outs based on gods and squeamishness deny those rights.

As it stands, schools are obligated to only the most perfunctory treatment of the subject – the biological. For any reasonable adult to consider the basic sperm-meets-egg is enough is not just wilfully ignorant, but harmfully so. There is a duty to prime adolescents for adulthood – teaching Diet Coke sex-ed belies the gravity of the subject and leaves young people ill-prepared for reality. You wouldn’t expect a teenager to drive a car well without instruction, and the same applies to sex. It’s fun, and the kids are going to do it. But like driving, it involves powerful equipment with the potential for life-altering consequences. Young people must be empowered to make healthy sexual choices. They simply cannot be expected to do that themselves without a solid foundation. Failing to talk honestly leaves teens to figure out what sex means, based on Chinese whispers and the internet.

Let’s reflect for a moment on the reality of what Mr Hoare and his cohorts are really asking of young people: to learn everything there is to know about sex, other than the basics, on their own. Sex is not biology alone. Teaching through this narrow prism ignores relationships. It ignores consent. It ignores porn. It ignores grooming. It ignores LGBTQI identity, expression and safety. It ignores gender stereotypes. It ignores female genital mutilation. It ignores abuse. It ignores domestic and sexual violence. It ignores contraception. It ignores responsibility. It ignores health. It is ignorant.

We have created a culture where the number of rapes of women and men is close to 100,000 in the UK each year, where a third of teenage girls suffer an unwanted sexual act, and where nearly half a million adults are sexually assaulted each year. I could spend the rest of this column citing statistics, but the picture’s pretty crystalline: society has a broken attitude towards sex, and without proper education, our kids will inherit that and pay it forward.

To those who vetoed this bill: why and how do you expect young people to absorb, assimilate and synthesise information on this complex issue entirely on their own? Trial and error will not suffice. Chance will not suffice. You are asking them to run with scissors, and it’s unacceptable and frankly dangerous. Danger is a strong word to use, and I use it without reservation – the uneducated pose a danger to themselves and to others. They are a risk. A risk to body, health, emotion and more.

We need sex education. It needs radical reform and it must be compulsory. But let’s not stop at danger, as we’re so prone to do. We’re comfortable only talking to kids about sex in the language of peril and consequence. We do sex and young people a disservice when we rely on that vocabulary. Yes, there is danger in sex – but dealing with danger quickly takes a backseat when you realise how good it is. So let’s not just seek to protect. We too need to talk about sex in the language of responsibility. We too need to talk about sex in the language of relationships. We too need to talk about sex in the language of pleasure.

When I first had sex, I was a teenager who thought she was in love and knew what she was doing. Short on information, we relied on cliches and bad information. I know now no amount of lust, scented candles or rose petals could have made it safer, enjoyable or meaningful. We were fumbling in the dark because it’s all we could do – pop culture and anecdote were all we had to go on.

Decades on, when we know so much, how can we offer so little?