Sex education is taught differently depending on where you are in the world, whether you are a boy or a girl, living in a religious environment or secular one, and whether having a choice is seen as a right or as a sin.

Although the topic is universally awkward for all young children (thanks to us adults making it so in the first place), a holistic approach to sex education is incredibly important in order to have informed sexual practices. This is what Abigail McElroy has been fighting for in her high school in Pennsylvania, where abstinence is the only creed about sex that is being inculcated into students’ heads.

Abigail wrote her story for CNN beginning with the statement, “I am not a piece of tape.” It is a response to what representatives from Amnion Pregnancy Center have preached in their annual visits to the school “informing” students about safe sexual practices. They have used tape as a metaphor to tell girls what happens to their worth if they have premarital sex — they lose a “critical feature” as women, just like “stickiness” is lost after a piece of tape has been used.