"ABSTINENCE ONLY" SEX ED MEANS
UNWANTED PREGNANCY AND STD'S

From the Washington Post courtesy of Eschaton:

Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.

Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

And

Among the misconceptions cited by Waxman's investigators:

• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."

• HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.

• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.

One curriculum, called "Me, My World, My Future," teaches that women who have an abortion "are more prone to suicide" and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the Waxman report said.

And

Some course materials cited in Waxman's report present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support." One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

Click here for the rest.

This is totally in keeping with anecdotal evidence I've been hearing for years from students at the high school where I used to teach. In one egregious instance, I was informed by multiple students that one particular health teacher was telling students that if you have anal sex you'll have to wear a diaper the rest of your life. Whatever your sexual tastes are, it can't be denied that such a statement is a straight-up lie. It's pretty clear that these "abstinence only" mistakes are being driven by a fundamentalist anti-sex agenda. That is, they're not "mistakes;" they're lies.

But this isn't just some intellectual exercise we're talking about here. Sex education has real world ramifications. Dangerous ramifications. For some insight into what results from the lies of "abstinence only," I find myself, courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe, returning to a source I haven't read in years, the student newspaper of the University of Texas, The Daily Texan:

Pregnancy's link to sex ed

Kate is now a statistic - a pregnant teenager. In Dimmitt, 80 miles north of Lubbock, she is one of 12 pregnant girls at a school of 330 students, a Dimmitt school official said. Now she's living in Lubbock, which doesn't fare much better. According to local lore, this dusty town eight hours from Austin boasts more churches per capita than any other in the nation. But it also boasts some of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state, with 36.4 percent in 2002, compared to the statewide rate of 28.5 percent, according to the Texas Department of Health's Vital Statistics from 2002. Lubbock County also has one of the highest STD numbers in the state, with 1,725 STD cases in 2003. Texas has the fifth-highest rate in the nation for teen pregnancy for girls aged 15 to 17.

Yet, since 1995, Texas has taught its teens that the only safe sex is no sex when then-Gov. George W. Bush signed into law a bill that made Texas the third state requiring abstinence-only sex education. Now, of course, Bush as president has taken that philosophy nationwide, putting millions of dollars into abstinence-only programs. And likewise, Texas' State Board of Education followed suit in touting abstinence when it approved four health textbooks early November. Only one of these textbooks mentions contraceptives, and then only once.

These textbooks can have nationwide effects, said Dan Quinn, a spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network who opposed the changes. Texas is the second-largest purchaser of textbooks in the country, so many publishers create textbooks targeted toward Texas and then sell them around the nation.

"What we get in Texas is essentially what kids in a lot of other states get," Quinn said.

And that means abstinence. Only.

Click here for the rest.

After reading LSU's student newspaper for the last few months, I now realize how good I had it at UT: this is a pretty darned good in-depth article. It puts a human face on all the hysterical rhetoric about teenage sexuality, and concisely explains this one aspect of our continuing cultural shift from reason toward dogma. "Abstinence only" is really screwing people up. Badly.

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