It's Official: "Abstinence Only" Does Not Work

Our local Portland newspaper, The Oregonian, has its faults--tending to be biased toward anything corporate, and acting as the Portland Police Bureau's mouthpiece in the ongoing problem of brutality in that agency--including a number of cases that received no coverage.

However, they tend to be right on the target on social issues, and an editorial in today's edition hit the nail on the head.

"Oregon never embraced the "abstinence-only" movement funded by the Bush administration. It never decided, as a matter of state policy, to fight teen pregnancy and promiscuity by treating premarital sex as a sin and contraceptives as contraband.

"Oregon instead supports comprehensive sex education that encourages abstinence without enshrining it. The approach has paid off. The state's pregnancy rate for girls under 18 has plummeted by almost 50 percent since 1990 and remains well below the national average, equaling fewer young families stuck in poverty and thousands of abortions prevented.

. . .

"The federal government threw about $1.5 billion into abstinence-only programs over the past decade, with a sharp increase in spending under the Bush administration. These programs teach teenagers to abstain from sex until marriage. They avoid facts about contraceptives, under the theory that this information undermines the abstinence message.

"Unfortunately, the programs don't do much good. A much-anticipated national study, authorized by Congress in 1997 and released this month, found that abstinence-only programs don't keep teenagers from having sex."

The study stated that about half of students lost their virginity by age 18, and that percentage did not change in areas that had abstinence-only education. I've seen other, more anecdotal, evidence that sexual activity among teens is actually significantly higher in the Bible belt, where schools are most likely using abstinence-only approaches. Pregnancy, STDs, and abortions certainly occur at higher rates in those states.

The editorial also mentions the fact that I have seen in other places--but rarely in the corporate media: today's teens are statistically less likely to get pregnant than their parents' generation. This is presumably my generation--Generation X or the 13th Gen. This is worth keeping in perspective. The 24-hour media sometimes make things seem worse than they really are.