More Abstinence-Only Sex Education

God, abstinence only sex education is a terribly close-minded and dangerous approach to teaching teenagers about sexual activity. Children are going to have sex, regardless of abstinence education or not. If you don’t teach them how to use contraceptives or avoid sexually transmitted diseases, what do you expect to happen when they actually start to have sex?

Surprise, surprise, Bush wants more abstinence only education.

Congress last weekend included more than $131 million for abstinence programs in a $388 billion spending bill, an increase of $30 million but about $100 million less than Bush requested. Meanwhile, a national evaluation of abstinence programs has been delayed, with a final report not expected until 2006.

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"We don't need a study, if I remember my biology correctly, to show us that those people who are sexually abstinent have a zero chance of becoming pregnant or getting someone pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease," said Wade Horn, the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services in charge of federal abstinence funding.

Those who say schools also should be teaching youths how to use contraceptives say Horn's argument ignores reality. Surveys indicate that roughly 50 percent of teens say they have sex before they leave high school. While the nation's teenage pregnancy rate is declining, young people 15 to 24 account for about half the new cases of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States each year.

Just in case you weren’t aware, here are what educational programs have to subscribe to in order to be eligible for funding.

What is referred to as "abstinence-only" education received its first major federal funding in 1996, when conservative members of Congress quietly included a provision in section 510 of the Social Security Act guaranteeing $50 million annually for five years, with more money likely on its way, for abstinence-only education grants to the states. The definition of this abstinence-only education is as follows:

According to federal law, an eligible abstinence education program is one that:

- Has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, physiological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;

- Teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school age children;

- Teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems;

- Teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity;

- Teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;

- Teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child's parents, and society;

- Teaches young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances; and

- Teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.

And, to conclude, a nice little look at Dubya’s home state, because Bush loves his abstinence-only education.

Texas: A Case Study

“I have seen what works in my state: raise expectations, insist on results, measure progress and blow the whistle on failure.”

Presidential candidate George Bush, 2000

- Texas spends over $10 million a year in teaching abstinence-only-until marriage sexual education

- Texas’ teen pregnancy of 113 per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19 is 46^th worst in the U.S.A, and over 220 teens becomes pregnant every day.

- Texas’ teen birth rate is the second worst in the nation, behind only Mississippi.

- Texas’ decrease in teen birth rates from 1991 to 1999 was the worst in the U.S.A., a full 11% below the national average.

- Texas has an extremely high number of cases of STDs, and accounts for 10% of all chlamydia and gonorrhoea cases in the nation.

- Texas ranks 44^th in the nation in chlamydia rates per 100,000 population and ranks 46^th in the number of HIV/AIDS cases.