Abstinence Education Is an Expensive Fantasy

TW: I would assume abstinence advocates could rustle up "scientific" studies to rebut the study Goodman cites. Facts these days are usually relative. In such a void our own biases and slants come into play but mine say Ms. Goodman is much closer to the truth than her opponents. Those on the Right snicker at the hope message of Obama, I would sneer at their approach to sex education which is based upon theology and "hope" rather than reality.

From Ellen Goodman at Boston Globe:
"...factoid in the newest research about American teens who pledge abstinence. The majority not only break the pledge, they forget they ever made it.

This study of about 1,000 teens comes from Johns Hopkins researcher Janet Rosenbaum, who compared teens who took a pledge of abstinence with teens of similar backgrounds and beliefs who didn't. She found absolutely no difference in their sexual behavior, or the age at which they began having sex, or the number of their partners.

In fact, the only difference was that the group that promised to remain abstinent was significantly less likely to use birth control, especially condoms, when they did have sex. The lesson many students seemed to retain from their abstinence-only program was a negative and inaccurate view of contraception.

This is not just a primer on the capacity for teenage denial or the inner workings of adolescent neurobiology. What makes this study important is this: "virginity pledges" are one of the ways that the government measures whether abstinence-only education is "working." They count the pledges as proof that teens will abstain. It turns out that this is like counting New Year's resolutions as proof that you lost 10 pounds.

Over the last eight years, a cottage industry of "abstinence-only until marriage" purveyors became a McMansion industry. Funding increased from $73 million a year in 2001 to $204 million in 2008. That's a total of $1.5 billion in federal money for an ideology in search of a methodology

...The sorry part is that sex education got caught in the culture wars. It's been framed, says Bill Alberts of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, as a battle between "those who wanted virginity pledges and those who wanted to hand out condoms to 14-year-olds."

...What the overwhelming majority of protective parents actually want is not a political battle. They want teens to delay sex and to have honest information about sexuality, including contraception. The programs that work best combine those lessons."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/07/opinion/edgoodman.php