Abstinence-only education programs meant to teach children to avoid sex until marriage failed to control their sexual behavior, according to a U.S. government report.
Teenagers who took part in the programs as elementary and middle school students were just as likely to have sex as those who did not take part in them, the survey found.
The report, ordered by Congress, was not released by the Health and Human Services Department, but by activists and by California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman’s office. An HHS spokeswoman did not answer a request for a comment.
Expect politicians embarrassed by the truth to volunteer that truth?
For both the program and control group youth, the reported mean age at first intercourse was identical, 14.9 years,” says the report.
After Waxman’s press conference, the report was “officially” released.
“American taxpayers appear to have paid over one billion federal dollars for programs that have no impact.”
Wow. There’s a suprise.
Abstinence education is ineffective, and anyone with a brain knows that. But we have turned over policy making to a coven of would be theocrats… so we get what we deserve.
Yepperz.
The religious right has proven time and again that they’re incapable of reasoning, so why be surprised?
When you “know” for a certainty that you’re right, and supress all evidence that says otherwise – then if additional evidence should come down the pike, you don’t ask yourself “Could I be wrong?”, since that’s simply not possible – you just continue supressing the evidence.
That’s the actual core thought process of religionists when confronted with anything that contradicts what they have preëmptively decided is true.
Egocentrism is a mighty persuasive thing. What objective reality demonstrates to be incontrovertable fact to any objective observer will always lose out to what I, The Infallible Center Of The Universe, have decided to believe.
All I can say is “2. Amen!”
When one knows God’s truth no amount of evidence to the contrary matters. Earth-centric universe, flat earth, creationism, intelligent design, …
The list goes on and one.
Wow, that is a real shocker :p
“God said it, I believe it, that settles it!”
> “To the contrary, the report specifically indicates that
> programs should continue with changes where necessary to
> make them more effective, particularly ‘promoting support
> for abstinence among peer networks’ as an important
> feature.” said Dr. Gary Rose, president of The Medical
> Institute.
How clueless can you get? This is the famous “you must not be doing it right” argument. It goes something like this:
“There is no evidence that rain dancing affects rainfall.”
“You must not be doing it right.”
“There is no evidence to support the existence of Santa Claus”
“You must not be looking right.”
“American taxpayers appear to have paid over one billion federal dollars for programs that have no impact.”
I dont think its true that there has been no impact. I remember seeing a study that people who go through this abstinence only sex-ed are 2-3 times more likely to have unprotected sex then those who dont.
So it has had an impact, just a negative one.
conservatives are a cowardly lot kept in line by peer-pressure — they can’t take care of kids who are having sex because that would make them appear not only to be accepting of sinners, but actively promoting sin, and they would be kicked out their church.
you see, religious conservatives’ dirty little secret is that they have strayed from Jesus’ teachings and don’t actually believe in forgiveness — they believe that once you sin you should be thrown in jail forever or be permanently ostracized from society.
we liberals on the other hand have no problem including the teaching of abstinence as the best alternative to protect the health of our youth, but without being so stupidly naive as to believe that doing so will actually stop every kid from having sex, and having the actual compassion not to treat wayward kids as garbage in the way conservatives do.
But isn’t that typical right-wing / religionist “logic”, like the War on Drugs?
“What we’ve been doing hasn’t worked, so we should do even more of it.”
#6, Thomas, you raised some great issues.
There is some evidence of a Santa Claus. On Christmas morning hundreds of millions of children wake up to find he visited while they slept.
There is also evidence that “Abstinence” works. There is only one reported case of a “virgin” ever giving birth and that is disputed in some circles. In the mean time, there are quite a few girls that have neither had sex nor conceived.
Whether the success comes from school administered programs, third party (Planned Parenthood) information, parental guidance, or even peer pressure in unknown.
The two questions that might have been better answered are what effect does Abstinence Programs have on teen pregnancies and on the spread of STDs as teenagers are battling their “God given” raging hormonal drives to reproduce. The results might even have been compared to comprehensive programs that teach sex education in terms of condoms, birth control, child rearing, teen parenthood consequences, physical issues of child bearing at a young age, as well as abstinence.
I have always been amazed that celibate ? Catholic Priests have the responsibility and role of sex educators and marriage counsellors
Not effective enough huh? I have an idea: Put these teenyboppers in a room with an undisciplined 3 year old. It may not decrease the number of teen pregnancies but at least they’ll know what they are getting into.
Abstinence is a form of sexual deviance for any sexually reproducing species. Teaching it as a form of birth control, while harmless, is also useless. If we want to keep people from getting AIDS and dying, we need to provide good real sex education. I had it many many moons ago and never ever had sex without birth control. Now, with AIDS being far more prevalent than it was in my time, and also just more publicized than then, we need to teach people about sex and about condoms and make them readily available.
If our prudish society can’t deal with them being actively handed out in the classrooms, then at the very least they must be made available at the school nurses office. Anything less is dooming many to death.
On a semi-related point, spending money to send people to teach abstinence in Africa, instead of distributing condoms, is like dropping an AIDS bomb on Africa as part of a holy war. You must adopt American Christian values or we will just let you die of AIDS. Admittedly, this is not the only issue to be dealt with in Africa regarding sex. But, distribution of condoms must be part of the solution. Teaching abstinence never will be.
Abstinence is a form of sexual deviance for any sexually reproducing species.
Teaching it as a form of birth control, while harmless, is also useless. If we want to keep people from getting AIDS and dying, we need to provide good real sex education. I had it many many moons ago and never ever had sex without birth control. Now, with AIDS being far more prevalent than it was in my time, and also just more publicized than then, we need to teach people about sex and about condoms and make them readily available.
If our prudish society can’t deal with them being actively handed out in the classrooms, then at the very least they must be made available at the school nurses office. Anything less is dooming many to death.
On a semi-related point, spending money to send people to teach abstinence in Africa, instead of distributing condoms, is like dropping an AIDS bomb on Africa as part of a holy war. You must adopt American Christian values or we will just let you die of AIDS. Admittedly, this is not the only issue to be dealt with in Africa regarding sex. But, distribution of condoms must be part of the solution. Teaching abstinence never will be.
For any who doubt my first statement, all you need to decide is whether sex is a normal part of life for a human. If so, not having sex, long term, as in the priesthood, is a deviant behavior.
Abstinence is a form of sexual deviance for any sexually reproducing species.
Teaching it as a form of birth control, while harmless, is also useless. If we want to keep people from getting AIDS and dying, we need to provide good real sex education. I had it many many moons ago and never ever had sex without birth control. Now, with AIDS being far more prevalent than it was in my time, and also just more publicized than then, we need to teach people about sex and about condoms and make them readily available.
If our prudish society can’t deal with them being actively handed out in the classrooms, then at the very least they must be made available at the school nurses office. Anything less is dooming many to death.
On a semi-related point, spending money to send people to teach abstinence in Africa, instead of distributing condoms, is like dropping an AIDS bomb on Africa as part of a holy war. You must adopt American Christian values or we will just let you die of AIDS. Admittedly, this is not the only issue to be dealt with in Africa regarding sex. But, distribution of condoms must be part of the solution. Teaching abstinence never will be.
For any who doubt my first statement, all you need to decide is whether sex is a normal part of life for a human. If so, not having sex, long term, as in the priesthood, is a deviant behavior.
You want to prevent your kids from having sex? CASTRATE THEM.
Screw it…
Uh folks, read the report a little more carefully. It says the rates of sexual encounters, pregnancy, etc, were the same, between the groups taught abstinence and those given standard sex education courses. Turn off your intolerance for religion and read between the lines: kids aren’t paying much attention no matter WHAT they’re being taught.
To be sure, a program that has so much spent on it with so little impact needs to be changed. I think spending it on arts education and programs that will keep the little monsters BUSY would do far more good than another experimental program.
Oh, and RAX262 – dead on target! To heck with having kids bring in eggs or sugar sacks to carry around for a week or two – bring the real kidlets! It should scare the pants onto most of them!
Wow! This is totally unbelievable! Do you mean to tell me, and actually want to convince me — that teen-agers are naturally horny, and will want to hump — no matter what their religion is, or what they’re told?!!!?!!!?!!?!?!? NO WAY!!!!!
As anybody know, teen-agers are the most willing and accepting audience you’ll ever find. They’ll believe anything and everything you tell them! Take this sex topic, for instance. Teens are utterly sexually passive because adults say, “NO!” Actually, it’s vaguely amazing the species has survived this long, what with the historically low rates of teenage pregnancies!
Teens also NEVER DO THESE THINGS: smoke cigarettes (because they’ve been told they’re evil), smoke pot (weed is so evil, one can tell by the giggling and overall feelings of happiness and joy), use serious drugs (meth, coca, ‘shrooms, LSD, and especially MDMA are all really NOT as fun as “they” say), drink alcohol (how would they acquire it at their ages?!?), drive fast (they prefer safety because they completely know and understand that they are not invincible), skip school (because what kind of future would they have?!!?!!?!!?!)…………..
Point made? For some of ya’all, probably not…
Just because they do not follow good advise does not mean it is not good advise. It may not stop them but I am still going to teach my kids not to play with fire. Whether this is the governments job is another discusion altogether.
#18 – tkane,
I read that report carefully, and searched for any occurrence of the string “sex ed”. It is my understanding that the comparison is between teaching abstinence only and not. There is nothing in this report that says that these kids did or did not have other sex education. If you have a more detailed version of the report, please post it.
My 3-year high school has a population of 2500 students. According to the report, there were 2057 youths in the total sample population with 1209 in the program group. One group was primarily older white students from 2-parent homes. The other three groups were primarly younger black students from poor single parent homes. The report doesn’t say what the percentage of male to female students or what the total population of students were. It does mention that in 2005, there were 831,000 pregnancies in women aged 15-19. From that you could estimate at least 2,000,000 total students in that age group. So the sample size for this report is at least less than 0.1%. The sample group is 19% white, 63% black.
The sample size is too small and does not represent the true population.
How much taxpayer money was wasted on this report?
I posted a message last night…why has it been removed?