Equal Writes

by Beth Zak-Cohen

The Washington Post recently published an article about an abstinence-only education study that had a not so shocking conclusion. Abstinence only education reduces the number of kids having sex. While no study has conclusively determined this fact previously, I feel like this was not something very groundbreaking. The purpose of abstinence only education is to stop kids from having sex. Sometimes it succeeds.

However, I think the bigger question, and the question critics of this time of sex-ed ask if this: what about the times when it doesn’t succeed? If students do end up having sex but don’t know about things like condom use, the potential consequences are widespread. As much as we may not morally want our kids to have sex, logically, if it is safe, monogamous sex the risks are very low. If kids, on the other hand, have sex with multiple partners, without knowing how to use condoms, basically without comprehensive sex-ed, this raises the chances that these kids will end up pregnant or with a sexually-transmitted disease.

The article gives an interesting counterpoint to this argument. It says,  “The abstinence program had no negative effects on condom use”. Why? This abstinence program talked about condoms. Or more specifically, “it did not disparage condoms”. So, yes, the 33% of students who received the abstinence program but still had sex (compared to 52% in the comprehensive program) used condoms. Whether they used them correctly and whether a higher rate of STDs and pregnancies came out of this group is absent from the article.

However, the study was different from previous abstinence programs in other ways too. Sex outside marriage was not portrayed as never appropriate. Students were not necessarily told to wait until marriage to have sex, just to wait until they were ready. As the article states this program “did not take a moralistic tone” which is important in a society in which sex before marriage is widely accepted, even encouraged. Telling these kids that sex before marriage was always wrong would probably make them rebel against the message, because that would cast a pall on their friends or family members whom they knew to be having sex. Of course, there was one more difference in this program. The kids were younger. At 12-13 years old, these children may not have had sex anyway. However, the difference in the statistical percentages that did have sex, a 19% increase with a comprehensive sex program is still very significant.

“No one study determines funding decisions, but the findings from the research paper suggest that this kind of project could be competitive for grants if there’s promise that it achieves the goal of teen pregnancy prevention,” said Nicholas Papas, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. Because of this research it is possible that government funding will implement (or really re-implement) abstinence programs into schools across the nation. That presents too problems. First, as I discussed before, that some students still will have sex. These students will not know how to have safe sex. Pregnancy and STD rates will be at risk of rising.

Secondly though, the architects of the study deny the differences between this program and previous (Bush administration) programs. Valerie Huber, of the National Abstinence Education Foundation says, “For our critics to use marriage as the thing that sets the program in this study apart from federally funded programs is an exaggeration and smacks of an effort to dismiss abstinence education rather than understanding what it is.”

Claiming there is no difference between this program and previous ones is problematic because it allows supporters to generalize this study to all abstinence programs when, in reality, this study has changed the formula in some very important ways. In the end though, our focus needs to be not on stopping kids from having sex, but from making sure they have safe sex. This, in the end, is what will preserve our children’s health, and, ultimately, their lives.