Joycelyn Elders Quotes

American pediatrician, public health administrator, and former Surgeon General of the United States

Minnie Joycelyn Elders (born August 13, 1933) was Surgeon General of the United States from September 8, 1993 to December 31, 1994.

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Birth Name: Minnie Lee Jones

Alternative Names: Minnie Joycelyn Elders

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I think that we need to look at health - sexual health - as a part of our overall health, and I don't feel that you can really be healthy unless you are sexually healthy. And I truly feel that we need to start educating our children about sex from kindergarten through 12th grade, so that they can respect their sexuality and protect their sexuality so that they can be - have sexual health throughout their lives. Other countries do it. Why do we have to have the highest teenage pregnancy, highest rates of STDs, the highest rates of HIV in our adolescents? It's because we feel that ignorance is bliss, and it's not bliss. We got to educate our young people.

I believe that the reason we do not see health care as a human right is that our country is run by a class of white men who don't understand the problems of *needing* and *not having*. Perhaps they've never been there themselves. Nobody wants to be poor. We all want food, clothing, and shelter. And health care, too.

I want every child that's born in the world to be planned and wanted.

As long as I was in Washington I never met anybody that I thought was good enough, who knew enough, or who loved enough to make sexual decisions for anybody else.