Abstinence-only fails, sex ed doesn’t

December 20, 2007

The WaPo reported the other day that at least 14 states have “either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting [sex education] funds or are not expected to apply,” because the Bush administration mandates abstinence-only lessons in public schools receiving the funding.

“We’re concerned about this,” said Stan Koutstaal of the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program. “My greatest concern about states dropping out is that these are valuable services and programs. It’s the youths in these states who are missing out.”

Actually, that’s backwards. The youths are better off with actual sex-ed.

Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They found teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15, and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex, according to the study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

“Sex education seems to be working,” Trisha Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC who led the study, said in a statement. “It seems to be especially effective for populations that are usually at high risk.”

Whaddaya know; giving young people reliable, accurate information about sexual health leads to safer, more responsible behavior. Who would have guessed?

And on the flip side, we have the Bush administration’s approach.

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

“At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners” among teenagers, the study concluded. […]

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having “positive outcomes” including teenagers “delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.”

“Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect,” said the report.

Bush has routinely talked, in other contexts, about funding “what works.” If only he meant it.

No! No! No! That’s not the Republick way. They get things done by sticking their collective heads in the sand and pretending. Denial, it’s not just a river in Egypt.

  • If you teach teenagers about sex, it’s your sin if they have sex…

    … if you teach teenagers abstinence, it’s their sin if they have sex.

    It’s all a question of who goes to hell, and nothing else.

  • And I guess Brittney Spears’ little sister getting pregnant at age 16 should be a big wake-up call that the nation needs more sex-ed, not less. I mean really……

  • “Sex education seems to be working,” Trisha Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC who led the study, said in a statement. “It seems to be especially effective for populations that are usually at high risk.”

    Oops, something’s working = got to change it.

    Remember that IED-hunting policy we read about yesterday?

  • Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex,[…]

    Can’t have that. If they don’t get their girlfriends pregnant right off the bat, how will we know they’ve sinned? And, if we have no evidence of their sin, how will we be able to continue railing against the teenage single mothers? And where will our funding come from? Can’t have that.

  • There’s an old Arab saying I wrote in one of the comments here a few days ago, and it goes, ‘Trust in God, but tie your horse.’ There are a lot of quotes and aphorisms like that, and as we all know the near-equivalent in our own culture is ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ I’ve always been more or less a ‘believer’ and religious, except for a year at least during my teenaged years when I was an atheist. But I think a big drawback to how a lot of believers live their religion is the use of God as a safety-net or a co-pilot, and I think the different results of these two studies really demonstrates how developing that common-sense attitude shown in the quotes/aphorisms I mentioned above is so important in life.

    Having sex-ed without God in it, especially in your teenaged years (when you are still wondering often about all these things, such as whether there is a God and the nature of the universe and your place in it) is a real way that communicates to teens ‘Hey, you’re in charge of your behavior here, and if you don’t do things to take care of yourself, you’re really going to fuck your life up.’ Notwithstanding all the feelings and intuitions people will tell you they’ve had that have paid off, peoples feelings about things are often the irrational products of unconscious fears and hangups that keep them from doing the things they really need to do. In short, they are roadblocks in life. I’ve definitely made really big changes and done really hard things in life that feelings told me, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do this,’ over and over again- but I did it, because rationally, I knew it was, practically, the smart move to make, and lo and behold, those actions paid off. Those feelings I had were just the timid parts of me that wanted me to stay where I was accustomed to being, to what felt comfortable; they had nothing to do with God or angels or good advice, and indeed, I had good reasons to take the paths I took. I really would have stayed stuck in the muck or traveled far down really wrong roads if I hadn’t been able to take a tip from the classical teachings, and follow my reason, instead of putting irrational feelings up on a pedestal. Developing that attitude I mentioned in the first paragraph of this comment is a really important life-lesson, and I’m glad I learned it early on (regardless of how I feel about the existence of Christ) and I think reality-based sex-education embodies that perfectly.

  • Well, in addition to the secular, contraceptive-based sex-ed I had as part of public school here in NJ, I also had sex education in my Catholic classes sponsored by my church when I was 12 or 13, too, and I guess what I really mean isn’t “sex-ed without God in it.” But I guess maybe sex-ed that teaches the efficacy of using condoms instead of trying to deny it tends to sound like it’s straight-talk, and tends to foster that ‘You’ve got to learn to take care of yourself’ attitude, while sex-ed that tries to hide the efficacy of condoms probably tends to reinforce lessons people learn in Baptist/Protestant/Evangelical areas– that God is some kind of lucky talisman who is going to guide you through all sorts of situations without you having to use your reason and do things that require facing facts (or being courageous, etc.) and not being unrealistic. The education about condoms reinforces autonomy and the education about abstinence reinforces themes that can promote unrealistic behavior that some religious institutions may foster.

  • Bush is right. If young folks spent more time at home churning butter, weaving and cutting new sod for the roof, Pap wouldn’t have to take after them with the buggy whip so often.

    He’s not a bad president, for 1885.

  • There is clear evidence that abstinence-only education does little to prevent teen pregnancies, slow STD transmission, or delay the onset of sex. It should also be noted, however, that the CDC study conclusion that “sex education” is successful did not distinguish content: “The researchers did not evaluate the content of sex education programs, including whether students were taught about contraception or about abstinence only.”

  • Crispin Pierce wrote:

    There is clear evidence that abstinence-only education does little to prevent teen pregnancies, slow STD transmission, or delay the onset of sex. It should also be noted, however, that the CDC study conclusion that “sex education” is successful did not distinguish content: “The researchers did not evaluate the content of sex education programs, including whether students were taught about contraception or about abstinence only.”

    Well, it seems your comment is unnecessary, because it’s clear that there is other information in the post (the independent, non-CDC study) that supports that contraception sex-ed works.

    If you’re going to put those two sentences side-by-side (clear evidence that abstinence-only doesn’t work; but CDC study that shows sex ed does work doesn’t distinguish between content) you’re being irresponsible and misleading if you don’t try to explain the discrepancy.

  • Oh sure…by all means let’s not educate our children about how things really work. If fact, people should never learn anything more about their bodies than boys have peepees and girls have hoohoos. Yeah that would be great!

    Come on. The reality is, information is power. Knowing how a woman becomes pregnant, that it only takes once, is power. Knowing what an STD is, how it is transmitted and that it only takes one sexual encounter to get one, is power. Power to the people.

    Keeping young people ignorant by only teaching abstinance is perpetuating ignorance. Of course, ignorant people can be controlled far more easily that educated people.

    Don’t get me wrong, abstinance SHOULD be included in a well-rounded sex ed program. Just stop this pathetic, idiotic, preposterous notion that abstinance only is a valid sex ed program.

  • I guess we can’t expect people to be realistic. After all, there are all those Ron Paul supporters out there who think there is enough gold in the world to “back up” the U.S. cash supply and we can just stash it in some shed somewhere.

    That’s going to require confiscating a lot of bracelets, chains and amulets in NJ, to say the least.

    There’s only enough gold in the world to constitute a big cube of pure, solid gold about the size of a medium-sized house. Ha!

  • Independent thinker wrote:

    Don’t get me wrong, abstinance SHOULD be included in a well-rounded sex ed program. Just stop this pathetic, idiotic, preposterous notion that abstinance only is a valid sex ed program.

    Why is that? Shouldn’t abstinence be a personal choice, and not something the state is paid to promote?

    Why should the state tell young people not to have sex until they are married? What does the point at which they get married when they are of age or the point at which they start having sex have to do with anything the state has a right to care about?

    I think there is virtually no difference between, say, a couple who decide that they want to have sex while they are engaged or committed just because they have stressful lives and feel like they can’t wait for it, and a couple who decide that they can wait and that they really won’t feel their marriage is as special unless they wait for it. It doesn’t even have to have anything to do with “hook-up” sex. The evidence is showing that the contraceptive-base sex ed is working to get teenagers to not have sex as much (i.e., not hook up with dumb-asses on a silly whim, or not engage in a hook-up that is risky for catching STDs). The Bible may say that sex before marriage is wrong, but if that was originally connected to women being treated as property (and a non-virgin woman therefore being “sullied” or “used” property) then why is the proscription any more valid than other religious proscriptions that once had a secular purpose, but are now ignored by almost everybody (there are a few examples from the Bible I can’t think of right now, but preachers, for example, used to tell everybody that wearing shorts was wicked and women wearing pants was wicked; people used to say that dancing was wicked)?

  • Actually, prohibiting wearing shorts and women wearing pants and dancing probably didn’t have a secular purpose…

    But one thing from the Bible is eating pig; pigs used to carry a disease or a parasite that killed people. The Bible says it’s “unclean” and that may be a religious proscription, but all it may have originally meant was that pig was killing people, and the original proscription may have been no more meaningful than the old Mormon leaders switching (what they claimed God told them was) the LDS church’s position on polygamy as soon as the U.S. government told them it was going to prosecute polygamy, or old Muslim leaders’ switching what they said God told them about certain religious practices and holy places when the law made those practices inconvenient. It may just be that at some point, ancient Israelites were just too dumb to stop eating tasty pig, even though it killed their kids every once in a while; they were too stubborn and hedonistic to believe that there was something in the pig that was dangerous. Their religious leaders were smart enough to recognize the danger, and once they phrased it to their people in a religous way, the people were able to heed the proscription, because they feared God more than they feared silly old viruses and sicknesses, and they trusted their religious leaders to be getting the true messages straight from God. Superstition triumphed over reason.

    Today, eating pig isn’t dangerous. Whatever reason any “God” may have had to outlaw eating pig beyond it’s being dangerous is totally unclear.

  • Why any nutty Ron Paul supporter believes the supply of gold just magically grows to match the value of all the goods and services traded in the United States of America is beyond me. We can’t just print up more gold, like we can print up more dollars.

    According to this website, “In the world there are currently somewhere between 120,000 and 140,000 tonnes of gold ‘above ground’. To visualise this imagine a single solid gold cube with edges of about 19 metres (about three metres short of the length of a tennis court). That’s all that has ever been produced. Divided amongst the population of the world there are about 23 grams per person, about 1.2 cubic centimetres each. This equates to about $250 – $350 worth per person on Earth, depending on the current price. The value of that short tennis court sized cube is about $1.8 trillion. This compares to the US government’s sovereign debt of $6.9 trillion, which until 1971 was part-backed by gold. The US Gold Reserve is just over 8,000 tonnes – which is about 6% of the total gold ever mined. It is worth about $100 billion, or 1.5% of the US national debt.”

    So there is only enough gold in the world to back up about- at most- $350 worth of stuff for each person in the world!

  • Swan. I think you misunderstand me. I do not advocate promoting abstinance like some sort of “just don’t do it” campaign. That would be silly. What I was trying to say is that all aspects of sex education should be included in a well balanced curriculum. This includes (but is not necessarily limited to and in no particular order) human biology/physiology, contraception, disease, pregnancy, sexual identity and orientation, choosing to have sex or abstain and the ramifications for each, psychology of healthy relationships, implications of “hooking up”, what it means to get an abortion…..all of it. Our youth deserve nothing less than a complete picture. Hopefully, these youth would have supportive parents who are willing to talk about this stuff too. Then, at the end of it, we as adults and parents must accept that these budding young adults will ultimately make their own choices about sex. That is what I was trying to say.

  • “Who would have guessed?”

    um, well, only us intelligent bloggers i guess.

    but, then again, we’re talking about republicans running these programs, aren’t we?

  • Upon hearing the news, the Bush Administration announced that they were de-funding the CDC. Bush signed the order commenting “That will teach those snotty scientists to argue with me and God.”

    God later commented “George is a putz”

  • Y’all sure you have those percentages right? When I was fifteen I was a hundred percent more prone to having sex with, well thats a differnt story.

  • Effectiveness is for policy wonks, like certain Democrats. Republicans don’t believe in effective government policies, only lucrative ones or ones that help them win elections. How much federal money has gone to developing AO programs? (Just like NCLB has created a huge industry in its wake.) But mostly, AO programs are red meat fed to The Base to keep voting R.

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  • i agree completely that teens need to be educated on sex. with all the diseases, teen-pregencies happening yes i needs to be taught. on the contrary, teaching i teen to have safe sex, is not the way. condoms don’t prevent STDs, but abstinece does. i go to christain school and was taught sex-ed, but from apoint of view that instead of being careful, don’t do it at all. rather be safe than sorry.
    plus sex has it’s emotional bonds, that teens, and some unmarried couples can’t handel, thats why you should just leave it the way it was intended.

    but yes, i agree. educated kids on the dangers of sex is very important.

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