The Abstinence-Only
Delusion
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, April 28, 2007
Reliance on abstinence-only sex
education as the primary tool to reduce teenage pregnancies and sexually
transmitted diseases — as favored by the Bush administration and conservatives
in Congress — looks increasingly foolish and indefensible.
The abstinence-only campaign has always been driven more by ideology than by
sound public health policy. The program’s tight rules, governing states
that accept federal matching funds and community organizations that accept
federal grants, forbid the promotion of contraceptive use and require teaching
that sex outside marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical
effects.
At least nine states, by one count, have decided to give up the federal matching
funds rather than submit to dictates that undermine sensible sex education.
Now there is growing evidence that the programs have no effect on children’s
sexual behavior.
A Congressionally mandated report issued this month by the Mathematica Policy
Research firm found that elementary and middle school students in four
communities who received abstinence instruction — sometimes on a daily basis —
were just as likely to have sex in the following years as students who did not
get such instruction. Those who became sexually active — about half of
each group — started at the same age (14.9 years on average) and had the same
number of sexual partners. The chief caveat is that none of the four
programs studied continued the abstinence instruction into high school, the most
sexually active period for most teenagers, so it is not known whether more
sustained abstinence education would show more effectiveness.
Supporters of abstinence-only education sometimes point to a sharp decline in
teenage pregnancy rates in recent years as proof that the programs must be
working. But a paper by researchers at Columbia University and the
Guttmacher Institute, published in the January issue of The American Journal of
Public Health, attributed 86 percent of the decline to greater and more
effective use of contraceptives — and only 14 percent to teenagers’ deciding to
wait longer to start having sex. At the very least, that suggests that the
current policy of emphasizing abstinence and minimizing contraceptive use should
be turned around.
As Congress prepares to debate further financing, it should either drop the
abstinence-only program as a waste of money or broaden it to include safe-sex
instruction. Abstinence deserves to be part of a comprehensive sex
education effort, but not the only part.
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