Rant about abstinence only teaching:
Accurate, balanced sex education – including information about contraception and condoms – is a basic human right of youth. Such education helps young people to reduce their risk of potentially negative outcomes, such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Such education can also help youth to enhance the quality of their relationships and to develop decision-making skills that will prove invaluable over life. This basic human right is also a core public health principle that receives strong endorsement from mainstream medical associations, public health and educational organizations, and – most important – parents.
Yet, federal policy makers have provided large amounts of funding for abstinence-only education – programs that ignore youth’s basic human right and the fundamental public health principle of accurate, balanced sex education. Abstinence-only programs are geared to prevent teens – and sometimes all unmarried people – from engaging in any sexual activity. Indeed, the federal government has gone so far as to specify that these programs must have, as their “exclusive purpose,” the promotion of abstinence outside of marriage and that they must not, in any way, advocate contraceptive use or discuss contraceptive methods, other than to emphasize their failure rates. Since 1998, over $1.5 billion in state and federal funds has been allocated for these abstinence-only and abstinence-only-until-marriage (hereafter collectively referred to as abstinence-only) education programs.
Abstinence-only education programs are not effective at delaying the initiation of sexual activity or in reducing teen pregnancy.
A long-awaited, federally-funded evaluation of four carefully selected abstinence-only education programs, published in April 2007, showed that youth enrolled in the programs were no more likely than those not in the programs to delay sexual initiation, to have fewer sexual partners, or to abstain entirely from sex. Numerous state evaluations of federally-funded programs have yielded similar conclusions. A 2004 review by Advocates for Youth of 11 state-based evaluations found that abstinence-only programs showed little evidence of sustained (long-term) impact on attitudes and intentions. Worse, they showed some negative impacts on youth's willingness to use contraception, including condoms, to prevent negative sexual health outcomes related to sexual intercourse. In only one state did any program demonstrate short-term success in youth’s delaying the initiation of sex. None of the programs showed evidence of long-term success in delaying sexual initiation among youth enrolled in the programs. None of the programs showed any evidence of success in reducing other sexual risk-taking behaviors among participants. More specifically, a 2003 Pennsylvania evaluation found that the state-sponsored programs were largely ineffective in delaying sexual onset or promoting skills and attitudes consistent with sexual abstinence. Arizona and Kansas had similar findings of no change in behaviors. A 2004 evaluation from Texas found no significant changes in the percentage of students who pledged not to have sex until marriage. As in two other studies, the Texas analysis revealed that the percentage of students who reported having engaged in sexual intercourse increased for nearly all ages.
Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation claimed that many studies showed that abstinence programs were effective in reducing youth’s sexual activity. However, in a 2002 review of the ten studies cited by Rector, Douglas Kirby PhD, a widely recognized, highly reputable evaluator of sex education programs for youth, concluded that nine failed to provide credible evidence, consistent with accepted standards of research, that they delayed the initiation of sex or reduced the frequency of sex. One study provided some evidence that the program may have delayed the initiation of sex among youth 15 and younger but not among those 17 and younger.
TL;DR Teaching abstinence only is bad mmkayy?
/rant