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Abstinence-Only Education: Know the Facts

Over a five-year period ending in 2002, approximately $500 million in federal and state matching funds will have been spent on abstinence-only education. Because of the requirement that states match federal funds for abstinence-only programs, state dollars that previously supported comprehensive sexuality education — which includes but is not limited to abstinence-education — have been diverted to abstinence-only programs. (9)

The vast majority of American parents support comprehensive sex education. According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, most parents want their children to receive a variety of information on subjects including contraception and condom use, sexually transmitted disease, sexual orientation, safer-sex practices, abortion, communications and coping skills, and the emotional aspects of sexual relationships. Given the choice, only 1% to 5% of parents remove their children from comprehensive sex education courses. (10)

Fewer than half of public schools in the U.S. now offer information on how to obtain birth control, and only a third include discussion of abortion and sexual orientation in their curricula. A large nationally representative survey of middle- and high-school teachers published in Family Planning Perspectives reported that 23% of teachers in 1999 taught abstinence as the only means of STD and pregnancy prevention, compared with 2% in 1988. The study's authors attributed the change to the heavy promotion of abstinence-not sound educational principles. (11)

Abstinence-only sex education doesn't work. There is little evidence that teens who participate in abstinence-only programs abstain from intercourse longer than others. When they do become sexually active, though, they often fail to use condoms or other contraceptives. Meanwhile, students in comprehensive sex education classes do not engage in sexual activity more often or earlier, but do use contraception and practice safer-sex more consistently when they become sexually active. (12)

The U.S. has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world, and American adolescents are contracting HIV faster than almost any other demographic group. The teen pregnancy rate in the U.S. is at least twice that in Canada, England, France, and Sweden, and 10 times that in the Netherlands. Experts cite restrictions on teens' access to comprehensive sexuality education, contraception, and condoms in the U.S., along with the widespread American attitude that a healthy adolescence should exclude sex. By contrast, the "European approach to teenage sexual activity, expressed in the form of widespread provision of confidential and accessible contraceptive services to adolescents, is...a central factor in explaining the more rapid declines in teenage childbearing in northern and western European countries." (13)

Every reputable sex-ed organization in the U.S., as well as prominent health organizations including the American Medical Association, have denounced abstinence-only sex ed. And a 1997 consensus statement from the National Institutes of Health concluded that legislation discouraging condom use on the ground that condoms are ineffective "places policy in direct conflict with science because it ignores overwhelming evidence ... . Abstinence-only programs cannot be justified in the face of effective programs and given the fact that we face an international emergency in the AIDS epidemic." (14)

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