Sunday, October 6, 2002

A story published today by the Sun-Herald reports that over the last five years, the federal government has put some $250 million into various state education programs promoting sexual abstinence until marriage. Through funding partnerships with state health departments, programs like DeSoto County's Teen Outreach Program (TOP) and Charlotte County's Education Now and Babies Later (ENABL) use statistics on sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy, role playing and other measures to stress saving sex for marriage.

In 2002, the federal government paid out another $40 million in grant money for sexual abstinence programs directly to community organizations, according to information on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Web site.

For the 2003 fiscal year, President Bush has asked Congress to boost funding for state abstinence education programs by nearly one-third, to $135 million.

Under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, federal money may only go to an educational program that concentrates exclusively on abstinence. Because of this requirement, when the funding rises so does the resistance.

"There is no evidence that abstinence until marriage programs delay sexual activity," said Adrienne Verrilli, a spokesperson for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).

Verrilli said that because federally funded programs limit discussions of condoms to their failure rates, they may be placing young people at risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease.

"I think we can all agree we want our young people to delay sexual activity, but to deny them of critical information on how to protect themselves is harmful to their lives," she said.

In addition to SIECUS, the American Civil Liberties Union is pressing the President and Congress to widen the scope of programs beyond abstinence.

"Our argument there is that they are a form of censorship," said Lorraine Kennedy, education coordinator for the ACLU reproductive freedom program. "They are funding programs that do not give completely medically accurate information."

The ACLU sued the state of Louisiana for violating the separation of church and state in its use of federal funds for abstinence education. In July, a U.S. district judge in New Orleans granted an injunction prohibiting the Governor's Program on Abstinence from giving money to any program that advances a religious message. Louisiana has appealed the injunction and the case remains active.

According to Florida Department of Health statistics, the DeSoto County TOP program is making inroads on teen pregnancy rates. In 2000, the year the program was instituted, the county had the fifth highest teenage pregnancy rate in the state. In 2001, the teen pregnancy rate had dropped to 10th.

"We take the positive approach to the problems teens face today," said TOP coordinator Dorothy Yost. "Instead of telling them what they cannot do, we tell them what they should do. We offer suggestions to problems and focus on how to get there."