Posted on 05/07/2002 3:18:48 PM PDT by asneditor
A House committee recently voted to continue funding for Federal programs promoting abstinence for teenagers. The fact that the proposal was controversial reveals how accustomed we've become in recent decades to a total lack of behavioral standards regarding sex and the equally total abdication of our responsibility to raise our children.
Opponents of the measure did not assert -- at least not publicly -- that having sex is good for teenagers. The prevailing mantra is "they're going to do it anyway so why not protect them from disease and unwanted pregnancies." Accordingly, they wanted Federal funding for programs that encourage the use of contraceptives.
This means they prefer Federal funding that the organizations they represent, such as Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), could get a piece of.
Since Planned Parenthood is a major vendor of abortions, abstinence doesn't do much for their bottom line. SIECUS, which gets Federal money under other programs, encourages kids as young as five (yes , five) to learn all about masturbation, and advises teenagers to engage in oral sex, anal sex, take showers together and watch pornographic movies together.
These gentry have been insisting that "there is no evidence" abstinence instruction reduces the incidence of teen-age sexual activity. That is probably true in programs that are labeled "abstinence plus" or "abstinence based." These programs may mention abstinence as "one way" to avoid pregnancy and disease but then go on to provide detailed instruction in the use of condoms. It may be good for cucumber sales but the abstinence message is definitely weakened by offering or even encouraging altlernatives. The real message that comes across is that nobody expects you to remain abstinent.
Heritage Foundation researcher Robert Rector has effectively exposed the lie that real abstinence programs don't achieve reductions in teen sexual activity. He reports, for example, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (not known to have any connection with Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell) which noted that taking a formal pledge to remain virgin and participating in an abstinence program were "by far the most significant factors" in delaying sexual activity among kids in grades seven through twelve.
It's important to point out that so-called self-selection does not account for these results. It was not a case of only religious, middle-class kids from good families who probably would have stayed virgins anyway signing up for the program. The kids in the program, Rector emphasizes, were compared to others who were identical in terms of race, income, school performance, religious fervor and other demographic and social factors.
Significantly, it was found that a virginity pledge combined with strong parental disapproval of sexual activity reduced the probability of becoming sexually active by a whopping 75 percent. This should be encouraging to parents who have been told by self-serving experts that any attempt to stop their children from having sex is futile. The studies indicate a less fatalistic situations and that parents inclined to express disapproval of sexual activity are doing the right thing.
Rector reports that a program called "Not Me, Not Now" aimed at 9-14 year old kids in Monroe County, New York is considered responsible for lowering the sexual activity rate among 15-year-olds from 46.6 percent to 31.6 percent and the pregnancy rate fell from 63.4 per 1,000 girls to 49.5, a more rapid decrease than upstate New York overall. This program, among other things, emphasized parent-child communication.
Rector cites seven other abstinence programs in various parts of the country that showed significant results. Instead of wondering whether programs like these work, we should be asking why a specific abstinence "program" is needed. Why isn't teaching and expecting abstinence not the societal norm? Whoever decided, for he rest of us, that expecting kids to remain abstinent until marriage was a bad thing?
When sex education first began to appear in U.S. schools in the early 1960s, the selling point was that it would reduce teen-age pregnancy. When reducing the pregnancy rate in one county from 63.4 to 49.5 per thousand is considered a triumph can anyone say sex education delivered on that transparent promise?
The first mistake was made when parents allowed the task of instructing their children about sex to be taken over by officials with agendas. The people who promote and operate school sex education programs do not have the same goals as most parents.
Parents interested in getting into this fight and taking back their children can go to the Heritage Foundation website www.heritage.org and get Rector's report. And take it with them to the next school board meeting.
Read more here in today's paper.
According to them abstinence programs are abject failures.
MKM
ABSTINENCE EDUCATION HELPS REDUCE EARLY SEXUAL ACTIVITY, ANALYST SAYS
WASHINGTON, Apr. 08 2002—Critics of abstinence programs scoff at the notion of teaching teen-agers to “just say no” to sex. But a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that such programs are quite effective at reducing teenage sexual activity and the out-of wedlock births that often result, a new Heritage Foundation paper says.
The research review, authored by Heritage Senior Research Fellow Robert Rector, summarizes the findings of 10 scientific evaluations of “abstinence-only” programs (as opposed to “abstinence-based” ones, which usually include only the barest mention of avoiding sex altogether).
The “virginity pledge movement,” for example, was examined in an article for the American Journal of Sociology. It found that taking a virginity pledge reduces by one-third the probability that an adolescent will begin sexual activity, Rector says. When a pledge is combined with strong parental disapproval of sexual activity, the probability of teens initiating sexual activity drops by 75 percent or more.
The “Not Me, Not Now” program, which used radio and TV ads to promote abstinence among young people in Monroe County, New York, also has proven successful, he says. One study found that, during the period the ads were being aired, the pregnancy rate for girls aged 15 to 17 fell from 63.4 pregnancies per 1,000 girls to 49.5 pregnancies. The sexual activity rate of 15-year-olds across the county, meanwhile, dropped from 46.6 percent to 31.6 percent.
“Safe-sex” programs, by contrast—which proponents have begun calling “abstinence-plus” or “abstinence-based”—“contain materials that would deeply offend most parents,” Rector says. “These programs send the implicit message that society expects, and accepts, early sexual activity.”
Guidelines developed by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), for example, include teaching children as young as 5 about masturbation, children as young as 9 about oral sex, and teen-agers about anal intercourse.
Policy-makers who champion such programs should be aware that sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States “have reached epidemic proportions” among young people in recent years, Rector says. Some 3 million teenagers annually contract STDs, afflicting roughly one out of every four teens who are sexually active.
But “true abstinence programs help young people develop an understanding of commitment, fidelity and intimacy that will serve them well as the foundations of healthy marital life in the future,” Rector says.
Nothing frightens the evil one more than someone like you who purposes this in their heart....
Gonna be tough telling people you got it off the toilet seat.
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