Last week, Congress voted to appropriate $131 million for Abstinence-only Sex Education (ASE). Luckily, President Bush was rebuffed on the additional $100 million he proposed to spend on these ineffectual programs: ASE is a progeny of ideology, not experiential experience. "Just say no" didn't work for drugs (noting the failure of D.A.R.E. programs); neither will it for sex.
Advocates for Youth (AFY) coincidentally just released an evaluation of ASE in 10 states. The evidence shows that while positive attitudes toward abstinence and intentions to remain abstinent increased, there were no significant changes in adolescents' sexual behavior. Meanwhile, groups such as the Abstinence Clearinghouse (AC) are busily, yet fruitlessly, trying to suppress the numerous empirical studies demonstrating the effectiveness of comprehensive sex education programs and the ineffectiveness of ASE in the U.S. and abroad. Concomitantly, AC provides little empirical support for the abstinence-only position.
Wade Horn, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, is backing ASE with blithe and irrational refutations: "We don't need a study, if I remember my biology correctly, to show us that those people who are sexually abstinent have a zero chance of becoming pregnant or getting someone pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease." Yet, as James Wagoner of AFY states, "The only 100 percent way to avoid a car collision is not to drive, but the federal government sure does a lot of advocacy for safety belts."
Mr. Horn ignores the fact that approximately 47 percent of adolescents are sexually active; these adolescents need candid information on sexual and reproductive issues. Adolescents know far too little about sex, as studies have demonstrated. Endorsing programs that afford no relevant information on condoms or birth control only exacerbates these adolescents' circumstances.
Furthermore, Human Rights Watch (HRW) just released a report in which, as the National Institute of Health declared in 2000, "condoms provide nearly 100 percent protection against HIV." Yet, as HRW recognizes, "the Bush Administration is spending millions of dollars on abstinence-only programs that mislead people at risk of HIV/AIDS about the effectiveness of condoms ... Exporting these programs to countries facing even more serious HIV/AIDS epidemics will only make the situation worse around the world."
Indeed, Bush has already hindered the fight on AIDS in Africa by enacting stipulations on U.S. AIDS spending. Leaders of African nations, such as the leaders of Uganda, Swaziland, Kenya and Peru have also recently taken anti-condom stances because of Bush's stellar judgment.
Additionally, in 2002, the Center for Diseases Control (CDC) listed the five most effective sex education programs on their Web site, none of which were abstinence-only. However, in 2003, the CDC deleted the information without any "scientific justification." Indeed, the CDC still doesn't index "condoms" under "Health Topics A -- Z" on their Web site.
Dr. Robert Blum, of the University of Minnesota, offers this mediation: "For many who challenge abstinence-only education it is not the abstinence but the only that is most problematic." Thus, many in academe are gamely espousing, "multifaceted intervention program that provided information and skills, as well as counseling and services" to postpone "the initiation of sexual behavior and the encouragement of responsible sexual behavior."
Bush and Co.'s endorsement of ASE evidences his ideological hardheadedness and vilifies the enterprise of science. Concerning the lack of empirical support for abstinence-only programs, a top Bush advisor flatly asserted, "Values trump data."
Write to Russ at
rjwpsy@bsu.edu
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