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June 13, 2007 |
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“WE ARE NOT YOUR PAWNS”
Youth Activists Deliver “Pawns” to Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee to Protest INCREASE to Discredited Abstinence-Only Programs
 WASHINGTON, DC (June 13, 2007) On the eve of the House Appropriations Committee vote to increase abstinence-only-until-marriage funding to $140 million, youth activists from Advocates for Youth sent Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee a message - - “Youth are NOT Pawns in Your Political Game!”
Despite the findings of a long-awaited congressionally-mandated report showing that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs do not work to help teens delay sexual initiation, the House Committee is poised to provide these ineffective programs with their first increase in four years. A recent article in CQ Today cited Democrats as seeing the additional abstinence-only funding as “paving the way for more spending on domestic programs they favor”- - in short, a trade-off for things they think are more important.
"What they’re really saying is that young people like me are expendable,” said Meheret “Mimi” Melles, a member of Advocates’ International Youth Leadership Council. “I’ve got this to say to Democrats - - I’m old enough to vote and I’m pretty pissed right now.”
“I expected this from conservative Republicans - - after all, they created these programs,” Melles continued. “But after last November’s election, I was sure the Democrats would quit funding these bad programs.”
Since 1982, Congress has allocated over $1.5 billion for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that censor information about birth control and the health benefits of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. The 10-year study ordered by Congress and conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. found that “Youth in the [abstinence-only] program group were no more likely than control group youth to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age.”
“I don’t understand how they can keep ignoring the facts,” said Alejandra Salazar Salame, a policy intern with Advocates for Youth. “The facts are supposed to matter when it comes to research and policy. The facts tell us to stop funding programs that don’t work and start funding programs that do. It’s really quite simple.”
Although teen pregnancy rates are decreasing, the United States still has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, with between 750,000 and 850,000 teen pregnancies a year. Each year, teens in the United States contract an estimated 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections and approximately 50 young people a day, an average of two young people every hour of every day, are infected with HIV.
"The constituency for scientifically accurate sex education is huge. Over 82 percent of Americans support comprehensive sex education. These folks include parents, teens, medical professionals, teachers and religious leaders who all believe that abstinence-only programs are a colossal waste of their money,” said James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth. “Over the next months, Democrats will hear from these people.”
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Advocates for Youth is a national, nonprofit organization that creates programs and supports policies that help young people make safe, responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.
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