Abstinence Only as Sex Education

[Dardedar]

DAR
My friend Bill responded in an email to the comments I posted in the Abortion Cartoon thread. I'll just repost it this short article here so you can see what he is responding to:

***
Sexual Intelligence: UK tears off American gag

COLUMN By MARTY KLEIN, Ph.D.
From Sexual Intelligence
March 22, 2006

As we discussed years ago (click here), in 2001 President George W. Bush instituted America's Global Gag Rule.

This cut off family planning assistance to any international group that even discusses abortion using their non-U.S. funds. That's like saying you won't give your child a textbook if he talks about reading comic books with his friends, or reads a comic book his friend buys.

Marty Klein, Ph.D.The United Kingdom is giving $5 million to a new Global Safe Abortion Program. This fund will increase access to safe abortion services in countries that have lost or cannot accept family planning funding from the United States because of new American restrictions.

"We work very closely with the Americans but we have a very different view from them on abortion," UK Minister Gareth Thomas said. "We know from experience that the absence of sexual and reproductive health services results in an increase in unintended pregnancies and, inevitably, a greater number of unsafe abortions."

This is not secret knowledge, nor does it challenge anyone's common sense: as every country except ours understands, the leading cause of abortion is unintended pregnancy. When the Religious Right refuses to reduce unintended pregnancy (except to tell people "don't have sex," which doesn't work), it shows that its opposition to abortion is political and psychological far more than ethical.

The Bush Administration says you're either in favor of unlimited government surveillance or you support terrorism. With the same tortured logic, they also feel you're either against sex or you're immoral.

We say you're either in favor of contraception and comprehensive sexuality education, or you support unintended pregnancy. Which means you're in favor of abortion.

Marty Klein, Ph.D. (www.SexEd.org).

Marty Klein, Ph.D is the author and publisher of Sexual Intelligence, a monthly electronic newsletter. This column is reprinted from Issue #73, March 15, 2006. For information about republishing this column, contact the author.

http://www.humaniststudies.org/enews/?id=234&article=3

BILL's Response:

-- Bill Yick
> Darrel, How about a rephrasing of Klein's
> statement below:
>
> "We say you're either in favor of contraception
> and comprehensive sexuality education, or you
> support unintended pregnancy. Which means
> you're in favor of abortion."
>
> How about "You are either in favor of
> comprehensive sexual education which
> teaches responsibility in a committed
> relationship, (i.e. marriage) or you
> support sexual promiscuity with all of it's
> tragic results, including
> abortion."

DAR
No, I couldn't support that statement because it is clearly false and based upon the fallacy of a false dichotomy.

Let's unpack it. First clause:

"You are either in favor of comprehensive sexual education which teaches responsibility in a committed relationship, (i.e. marriage)..."

This is just redundant. All responsible sex education (and certainly "comprehensive sexual education") will teach "responsibility in a committed relationship" (i.e. contraception, how the parts work etc). So this really doesn't say much. Perhaps you mean to something like, responsible sexual education will teach people they should ONLY have sex while married. That's probably what you meant to say. I do think comprehensive sexual education does teach that having sex in a committed relationship is the ideal. No question about that. But to suggest that is the only kind of sex people are going to have is niave and stupid, oh BTW, the very basis of "abstinence only eduation," which does not work, and will cause more abortions as Kline correctly says.

Second clause of the false dichotomy:

"...or you support sexual promiscuity with all of it's tragic results, including abortion."

No, obviously false. Children can be taught, and are taught, in a comprehensive sexual education program that sex is ideal and most safe between two people in a committed relationship. But it would be niave and stupid (i.e. abstinence only education) to pretend that this is what most people are going to do. They are not. And pretending they are going to act this way, quite contrary to indisputable facts, is to be niave and stupid and act in a way that will absolutely cause more abortion and I will also add, cause more STD's.

BILL
> "Sexual abstinence works every time it is
> practiced."

And fails, SPECTACULARLY, and with tragic results, more teen pregnancy, more abortion and more STD's every time it is taught as the only option. Now I will reference two lines of evidence backing up my comments.

1) Evidence showing that America's abstinence only education does not work

***
Abstinence-Only Education: The Costs — Social and
Financial

Since 1996, nearly $1 billion in federal and state
matching funds has been committed to abstinence-only
education (Boonstra, 2004). Because of the requirement
that states match federal funds for abstinence-only
programs, state dollars that previously supported
comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education
— which includes but is not limited to
abstinence-education — have been diverted to
abstinence-only programs (Schemo, 2000).

The vast majority of Americans and parents support
comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education.
Eighty-one percent of Americans and seventy-five
percent of parents want their children to receive a
variety of information on subjects including
contraception and condom use, sexually transmitted
infection, sexual orientation, safer sex practices,
abortion, communications and coping skills, and the
emotional aspects of sexual relationships. Fifty-six
percent of Americans do not believe that
abstinence-only education prevents sexually
transmitted infections or unintended pregnancies.
Given the choice, only one to five percent of parents
remove their children from responsible sexuality
education courses (Albert, 2004; Research!America and
APHA, 2004; AGI, 2003a; AGI, 2003b; KFF, 2000; Kirby,
1999).

Fewer than half of public schools in the U.S. now
offer information on how to obtain birth control, and
only a third include discussion of abortion and sexual
orientation in their curricula. A large, nationally
representative survey of middle school and high school
teachers published in Family Planning Perspectives
reported that 23 percent of teachers in 1999 taught
abstinence as the only means of reducing the risk of
sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy,
compared with two percent in 1988. The study's authors
attributed the change to the heavy promotion of
abstinence — not sound educational principles
(Darroch, et al., 2000; Wilgoren, 1999). Currently, 35
percent of public school districts require abstinence
to be taught as the only option for unmarried people
and either prohibit the discussion of contraception or
limit discussion to its ineffectiveness (AGI, 2003a).

Abstinence-only sexuality education doesn't work.
There is little evidence that teens who participate in
abstinence-only programs abstain from intercourse
longer than others. It is known, however that when
they do become sexually active, teens who received
abstinence-only education often fail to use condoms or
other contraceptives. In fact, 88 percent of students
who pledged virginity in middle school and high school
still engage in premarital sex. The students who break
this pledge are less likely to use contraception at
first intercourse, and they have similar rates of
sexually transmitted infections as non-pledgers
(Walters, 2005; Bearman and Brueckner, 2001).
Meanwhile, students in comprehensive sexuality
education classes do not engage in sexual activity
more often or earlier, but do use contraception and
practice safer sex more consistently when they become
sexually active (AGI, 2003a; Jemmott, et al., 1998;
Kirby, 1999; Kirby, 2000; NARAL, 1998).

The U.S. has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the
developed world, and American adolescents are
contracting HIV faster than almost any other
demographic group. The teen pregnancy rate in the U.S.
is at least twice that in Canada, England, France, and
Sweden, and 10 times that in the Netherlands. Experts
cite restrictions on teens' access to comprehensive
sexuality education, contraception, and condoms in the
U.S., along with the widespread American attitude that
a healthy adolescence should exclude sex. By contrast,
the "European approach to teenage sexual activity,
expressed in the form of widespread provision of
confidential and accessible contraceptive services to
adolescents, is . . . a central factor in explaining
the more rapid declines in teenage childbearing in
northern and western European countries" (Singh &
Darroch, 2000). California, the only state that has
not accepted federal abstinence-only money, has seen
declines in teenage pregnancy similar to those seen in
European countries. Over the last decade, the teenage
pregnancy rate in California has dropped more than 40
percent ("California reduces...," 2004).

Every reputable sexuality education organization in the U.S., as well as prominent health organizations including the American Medical Association, have denounced abstinence-only sexuality education. And a 1997 consensus statement from the National Institutes of Health concluded that legislation discouraging condom use on the grounds that condoms are ineffective "places policy in direct conflict with science because it ignores overwhelming evidence . . . Abstinence-only programs cannot be justified in the face of effective programs and given the fact that we face an international emergency in the AIDS epidemic" (NIH, 1997).
***
LINK

DAR
My second line of evidence shows that areas (like the US and the religious South in particular) that have more of this religious based nonsense (teach inaccurate information about sex to scare the children and instead teach that the only option is to not have sex outside of marriage) have more teenage pregnancy, more abortion and more STD's.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. “The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.” Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions. He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy. The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates,..."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFrien ... -2,00.html

And:

"Within the United States "the strongly theistic, anti-evolution South and Midwest" have "markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the Northeast where ... secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms."

Three sets of findings stand out: the associations between religion -- especially absolute belief -- and juvenile mortality, venereal disease and adolescent abortion. Paul's graphs show far higher rates of death among the under-5s in Portugal, the U.S and Ireland and put the U.S. -- the most religious country in his survey -- in a league of its own for gonorrhea and syphilis.

Strangest of all for those who believe that Christian societies are "pro-life" is the finding that "increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator ... Claims that secular cultures aggravate abortion rates (John Paul II) are therefore contradicted by the quantitative data."

These findings appear to match the studies of teenage pregnancy I've read. The rich countries in which sexual abstinence campaigns, generally inspired by religious belief, are strongest have the highest early pregnancy rates. The U.S. is the only rich nation with teenage pregnancy levels comparable to those of developing nations: it has a worse record than India, the Philippines and Rwanda. Because they're poorly educated about sex and in denial about what they're doing (and so less likely to use contraceptives), boys who participate in abstinence programmes are more likely to get their partners pregnant than those who don't."

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/10 ... thout-him/

(George Monbiot is the author of 'Poisoned Arrows' and 'No Man's Land' (Green Books). Read more of his writings at Monbiot.com. This article originally appeared in the Guardian.)

D.

(I invited Bill to respond in this forum)

--------------------------
"Dr. Bearman also reported on an analysis of young adults who had pledged as teenagers to remain virgins until marriage, a type of program that is supported by federal policy. The researchers found that young adults who took virginity pledges as teenagers had the same rates of STDs as other young adults once they became sexually active--even though pledgers had shorter periods of sexual activity and fewer sexual partners. Virginity pledgers are also less likely to know their STD status--increasing the chances they will infect a partner or suffer long-term health consequences. This is of particular concern since nearly nine in 10 virginity pledgers have sexual intercourse before getting married.

Dr. Bearman noted that young people's views are increasingly shaped by programs that teach them they must stay abstinent until marriage, while discussing contraceptives only in terms of failure rates. Federal law prohibits government-funded abstinence-only programs from providing information about the health benefits of using contraception, including condoms. "It's truly shocking how little medically accurate information teens are getting about how to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease," he said. "The scare tactics and negative messaging used by today’s abstinence-only sex education programs put young people in harm’s way."

http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/20 ... ence_a.php
.

Edited by Savonarola, 11:25 24Mar06: shortened link

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Fundies are hell-bent on proving that what you don't know can not only hurt you, it can hurt the entire nation.