ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH

Congress must get the message: Abstinence-only doesn’t work

By James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth
The Tennessean.com, April 17, 2007

In 1996, Congress voted to spend money to promote abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. A year later, Congress mandated a long-term scientific study of these programs to see if they worked. On Friday, April 13 — 10 years and more than $1.5 billion later — the report was finally released. The conclusion is as devastating as it is simple: The programs don’t work.

The 2,000 young people in the study were no more likely to remain abstinent, had just as many sex partners, and commenced having sex at the same mean age as young people who were not in the programs.

The problem with abstinence-only-until-marriage programs is not just that they are ineffective; it’s that they also prohibit information about the benefits of contraception and condoms. The argument has always been that abstinence-until-marriage “works every time,” so young people don’t need information about other forms of prevention. Good in theory, perhaps, but not so effective in practice. By age 18, more than 70 percent of young people have had sex. By the time people get married in this country, that figure goes up to 90 percent.

We need to restore common sense to sex-education policy. Research shows that programs that include abstinence and contraception are the most effective because they help young people delay sex and use protection when they become sexually active. Research also shows that educating young people about sex and prevention does not cause them to have sex.

So, let’s stop spending money on programs that go to the extreme in one direction and start spending money on programs that contain a balanced approach.

But let’s not let Congress off the hook for the $1.5 billion they spent on ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

Congress had to run a lot of “stop” signs to keep funding these programs over the past decade. Why didn’t the funding stop when the Institute of Medicine, the nation’s leading public health authority, called for the elimination of abstinence-only programs in 2000? Why didn’t it stop when the Society of Adolescent Medicine reported that the efficacy of abstinence-only programs was “near zero?”

You might also wonder why Congress didn’t take the hint when 10 states issued negative evaluations; when eight governors refused abstinence-only funding; or when the U.S. Government Accountability Office criticized the programs for lack of oversight and possible violations of the Public Health Service Act; or when the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics called for a comprehensive approach — one that includes abstinence and contraception?

Clearly, Congress has been asleep at the switch. The time has come to support programs that protect the health and safety of young people where they live — in the real world.

With a new Congress, the spotlight is rightfully on the Democrats. We will see if they’ll continue to throw good money after bad or whether they will embrace a more balanced approach.

There is much at stake.

Every day in the United States, more than 10,000 young people get an sexually transmitted disease, more than 2,400 become pregnant, and 55 contract HIV. These are the worst teen sexual-health outcomes in the industrialized world.

A decade ago, Congress asked for advice on sex education policy. Last Friday, they got it. It’s time to move on.