Although abstinence programs may have been a noble and even a moral effort but it's now clear that they have created more problems than they have solved.

Sexual Abstinence Programs

After spending hundreds of millions of dollars promoting sexual abstinence throughout the United States, the results seem clear. The main effect of the abstinence effort has been more teens having unprotected sex -- a significantly higher percentage than before the abstinence campaign started.

The result is a high percentage of sexual disease, unwanted pregnancies and abortions.

There is considerable evidence to support this.*

A recent UNICEF report said that the teenage birthrate in the U.S. is much higher than any of the top 28 countries of the world. While U.S. tied Hungary for the most abortions, girls in the U.S. were not the most sexually active. Denmark holds that title. Even so, Denmark's rate of abortions is one half of that of the U.S. and its teen birthrate is one-sixth of ours.

The difference? Effective sex education.

According to USA Today, 50% of young people in the United States will contract a venereal disease before age 25, a percentage significantly higher than other countries.

The decline in contraceptive use may cheer those who have promoted faith-inspired school curriculums where there is no discussion of birth control. When condoms are mentioned it's generally to emphasize that they can fail. No one disputes that possibility, but without them the chances of pregnancy or sexual disease are far higher.

Abstinence-only programs do not equip young people to deal with today's social realities. The result is that, unlike other countries, young people in the United States are not being prepared with knowledge about safe sex, resulting in our high rate of pregnancies, abortions, and STD.

What's particularly sad is that some religious-right people are opposing such things as AIDS research and the vaccine for human papilloavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted disease for women in the United States.

We know that millions die from AIDS, but most people don't know that HPV causes 5,000 women to die each year from cervical cancer in the United States (about 200,000 world-wide).

Even though there is an effective vaccine against HPV which could save countless lives, some conservative and religious-right factions have opposed making it available because they feel it would increase premarital sex.

So we appear to have a situation where the first effective cancer preventative in the U.S., one which could save thousands of lives, is being opposed on the basis of morality.

Bogus Arguments

Various arguments have been put forth in talks to young people to discourage premarital sex. However, when objectively examined the validity of many of these arguments evaporates.

For example, young people were told that there was a negative relationship between being sexually active and grades in school. However, a major research study recently found that for young people in ongoing sexual relationships there was almost no correlation. (Interestingly some parents protested to a California newspaper that featured this story, saying young people shouldn't be told about research like this.)

Another argument has been that sexually active girls end up with emotional problems. But then it was found that the girls that "ended up with emotional problems" either had them to start with or because of existing environmental factors were already predisposed toward them.

We were also told that knowledge about birth control and, in particular, condom use would encourage premarital sex. Research does not bear this out, but research does show that both of these reduce STD, pregnancies, and abortions.

There are valid reasons to discourage premarital sex, but in this day of GOOGLE, trying to sell the idea on the basis of emotional presentations or faulty science, can backfire. After young people find that what they have been told is bogus, they start to disregard even valid information.

Abstinence Pledges

Abstinence pledges are often signed by young people following emotional and often misleading talks on the dangers of sex. Studies show that more than 50% of the young people who sign these pledges break them within a year.

Parents and school boards around the country are getting the message and opting out of abstinence programs, saying the money would be better spent on effective sex education.

As early as five years ago, even before the results of the above studies were released, a survey sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, NPR, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, found that 65 percent of parents of high school students said that federal money, “should be used to fund more comprehensive sex education programs that include information on how to obtain and use condoms and other contraceptives.”

[Also see The Price of Prudery and Turing Logic Upside Down]

* Based in part on studies by Columbia University and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, Centers for Disease Control, and reports in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

In contrast to most research, The Washington Post in Feb. 2010, reported a study involving 662 African American students from four public middle schools in a city in the Northeastern United States between 2001 and 2004 that showed that teaching abstinence within a sex education class reduced sexual activity.

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