Monday, June 24, 2002
Debates continue on funding of abstinence education programs
A story released today by the Medill News Service reports that a proposal by the Bush administration to increase funding for programs that promote sexual abstinence has fueled the debate over what kind of sex education will most help cut down the rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
The federal government this year funneled roughly $100 million to state agencies and community groups through three abstinence education programs. Lawmakers this summer will decide whether to increase the total by $33 million as requested by the administration. But with no conclusive data on the effectiveness of abstinence-only education, experts disagree on whether money used to encourage abstinence among teens without providing information on contraceptives is money well spent.
"The jury is still out on abstinence-only education," according to Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. "It is an ideologically frayed debate."
"Polls suggest parents and teenagers think the message schools should be sending is abstinence, but they also want information about contraception," Sawhill said. "It's like the advice -- don't drink and drive, but if you do drink, have somebody drive you home."
Cynthia Dailard, a senior public policy associate at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a think tank with ties to Planned Parenthood that specializes in reproductive health issues, went further in opposing abstinence-only sex education.
"Research is beginning to show that abstinence-only messages are not only unproven in their effectiveness but also may have harmful health consequences by deterring use of contraceptives when teens become sexually active," according to a policy paper Dailard wrote.
While the rates of teen sex in the United States are similar to those of other developed countries, pregnancy rates, birth rates and abortion rates are all higher in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The institute attributes the disparity to "less overall contraceptive use and less use of the pill or other long-acting reversible hormonal methods, which have the highest use-effectiveness rates."
The Bush administration proposal, if passed by Congress this summer, would bring total federal spending on abstinence education to $135 million a year, the same amount spent on contraceptive services to teens, according to the administration.
"Abstinence is the surest way and the only completely effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases," said President Bush in a February speech. "When our children face a choice between self-restraint and self-destruction, government should not be neutral.
"Government should not sell children short by assuming they are incapable of acting responsibly. We must promote the good choices."
