Abstinence-only Sex Education Worked For Me! (Part 2)

You probably remember your sex ed class. I was first introduced to formal sexual education in fifth grade. They separated the boys and the girls. The girls watched an excruciatingly painful video about menstruation and our changing bodies while the boys played basketball in the gym. I believe they had a video too, but somehow their's was a lot shorter. Then we learned all the nuts and bolts of the human reproductive system: where the ovaries are, how a fetus developes, what happens to us during puberty and why. Nowhere in that conversation was what sex is or what sexually transmitted diseases are or what protections are available. Those things weren't addressed until well into junior high, after some kids were already well past discussions of basic anatomy.

I remember hearing a rumor, when I was in seventh or eighth grade, that a teacher in a neighboring town had shown her class how to put a condom on, using a banana. I don't know if it was true or not (probably not...I grew up in Kansas), but I do know that parents were up in arms. Imagine actually showing a group of 15-year-olds how to protect themselves. In high school health we were shown slides of sexually transmitted diseases and learned about contraceptives were, but that was only for a few weeks out of the school year. After the sex ed portion was over we went back to learning about the food pyramid and exercise. We were never shown how to actually use any birth control device, we just saw pictures and read descriptions. We never had a doctor visit and answer our questions and tell us what to expect at our first gynocological exams. No, we just looked at scary slides. I don't remember any explicit instruction that sex should be reserved for marriage, but the implication was pretty clear: Sex is dirty, bad, and scary and the only way to 100% protect yourself from disease and pregnancy is to abstain from sex. If you do engage in sexual activity you can use some of these contraceptives to protect yourself, but you won't because you don't know how and you'll be too embarrassed to ask because sex is dirty, bad and scary.

The Federal Government offers money to states who participate in abstinence-only sex education programs through two sections of the Social Security Act and Title XX of the Public Health Service Act. According to Time Magazine, abstinence-only programs received $204 million in government funding in 2008. Many states have opted out of the federal programs, citing the restrictive nature of the Federal grants and studies that show that abstinence-only education does not deter teenagers from having sex. One such study getting some attention is a recently released study by John Hopkins University, showing that

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do.

What I don't understand is how these Federal grants still exist. If study after study (and simple common sense) shows that basing a sexual education on "teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity" doesn't actually teach children a realistic view of what sex is and how to protect themselves, then how can Federal dollars fund it? Yes, if people would just not have sex with each other out of wedlock, unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases could be eliminated. But it didn't work for Pleasantville, and it certainly doesn't work in the real world (it didn't even work in The Real World). The new Administration and Congress certainly have a lot on their plates, and changing these grants is just one more thing, but this is $204 million essentially going to waste. Couldn't these programs easily be eliminated, freeing up that money for a new, Comprehensive Sexual Education that actually may prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases? If there is one thing I learned from my sex ed experience, abstinence-only education isn't education at all, it's just scare tactics.



Sources:

• The History of Federal Abstinence-Only Funding
  
• States Turn Down Abstinence Education Grants (USA Today, June 24, 2008)
  
• Title V, Section (§) 510 of the Social Security Act (welfare reform)
• Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE), under Title XI, §1110 of the Social Security Act, formerly known as Special Projects of Regional and National Significance (SPRANS); and
• Adolescent Family Life Act, under Title XX of the Public Health Service Act.