Abstinence Only Sex-Education: A Costly Failure

The United States has extremely high rates of teen pregnancy and infection from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).  The rates of these maladies, in America, are higher than in England, France, and more than double what they are in Norway and Sweden.  To address this challenge, the present administration in Washington has been providing the states with funds for “abstinence-only” sex education.  States that accept these funds may not allow councilors to even talk about contraception and disease prevention, except through abstinence. 

 A recent increase in the already high rate of teen pregnancy and STD infections is showing that abstinence-only programs do not work.  A study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that teens in abstinence-only programs are no more likely to abstain from sex, delay initiation of sex, or have fewer sexual partners than teens not in abstinence-only programs.  In some cases, the study concludes that teen who go through the abstinence-only training are less likely to use contraception and protect themselves when they do become sexually active.  To make matters worse, abstinence-only programs often censor out life-saving health information that sexually active teens should have.  In some cases, these programs actually include inaccurate and occasionally blatantly false information. 

 So, a number of states (14 in all) have opted out of the federal funding, in order to initiate their own honest and medically-accurate sex education programs.  These programs which encourage abstinence, but show teens how to prevent pregnancy and disease have been shown to be considerably more effective than abstinence-only education.  These programs (there are fewer of them than there should be) have overwhelming popular support.  A very high majority of Americans think that teens should have accurate and honest sex education and knowledge of effective birth control methods. 

 Abstinence-only programs will cost taxpayers around $200 million in 2008.  It seems to me we should put that money into programs that work not ones that have been proven to be ineffective.  We can all agree that teen under the age of 18 should not be engaging in sex.  However, we know that many teens are becoming sexually active at an increasingly younger age.  In my view, teens deserve honest and medically-accurate sex education and taxpayers deserve to have their money spent on effective programs.     

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