In addition to provoking shame about a nearly universal activity, abstinence-only sex education is ineffective and dangerous. Last April, a 10-year study found that students who took abstinence-only courses were no more likely to abstain from sex than other students. Previous studies revealed that abstinence-only students avoid using contraception.
Programs in public schools teach patently false information like “the chances of getting pregnant with a condom are one out of six” and H.I.V. “may be in your body for a long time (from a few months to as long as 10 years or more) before it can be detected.”
The results are tragic. The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world (about the same as Ukraine’s), and the highest abortion rate in the Western world. Sexually transmitted infections like syphilis and gonorrhea are on the rise for the first time since the 1980s, and chlamydia is being diagnosed twice as often as it was a decade ago.
We in New Zealand have never had abstinence-only teaching in our schools or in most of our churches. Our kids are taught about sex in school from the age of 11. My youngest has just done his “about the body and puberty course which is the first one — next year age 12, they will get down to brass tacks about how to go about sex. They practice how to put on condoms in class at age 14, and know everything there is to know (via a carefully constructed syllabus from the liberal sex education side anyway) by the age of 15. Yet we have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the Western world, and our rates of non-AIDs sexually transmitted disease are equally high.
So much for the argument that one leads to another.
Of course, what we don’t teach is any sexual ethics — but that would be deemed to be irrelevant by those in charge of devising the syllabus.
New Zealand trails the US somewhat
Teenage pregnancy rate (rate per 1000 15-19 year olds)
USA 53
New Zealand 37
Canada 30
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Switzerland 4
A recent study in the U.S found that 25% of teenage girls with previous abusive relationships, say their partners actively tried to get them pregnant by manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control, or explicitly saying they want them to become pregnant.
Rape is a majority factor in pregnancies under age 15 and a minority factor above age 15.
New research reveals that many teenage girls are being sexually exploited and impregnated by adult men.
Interesting data; I wonder what explains the low pregnancy rate in Switzerland? As for the lack of efficacy of abstinence only education I am not surprised. Education alone is insufficient, what is necessary is education plus the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
The problem is not with abstinence education, but rather with the assassination of any expectation of sexual purity. Abstinence education is a hopeless attempt to cover a torn artery with a band-aid. It cannot accomplish the task to which it has been assigned.
Public regulation of sexual behavior ultimately depends upon broadly shared sexual mores. Shame and public censure are most effective methods of enforcing such mores. These we have lost. Indeed, they have been deliberately deconstructed. In fact, hostility to abstinence education has more to do with hostility to the assumptions of sexual purity that undergird it, and very little to do with its supposed ‘danger.’
It should therefore surprise no one that a libertine society which constantly preaches the propriety of promiscuous sex will see its children succumb in massive numbers to such a powerful temptation. It is an inevitable outcome – and for its libertine architects, all the more desirable.
carl
Thanks, Carl, Amen.
What we then must realise and accomplish is to work with our chidren so that they have the needed strengths to cope with the libertine society. We should realise that in 1600s England there also was a libertine society but some families were successful even there. We also know that the situation was changed. There is hope. The world has seen all this before. It is survive-able. We must teach, protect, and model for our children a mind-set based on truth in an existential, libertine society.
Prior to the advent of sex education in the U.S. the teen pregnancy rate was MUCH, MUCH lower than it became at some point AFTER the advent of public school sex education.
I am old enough to remember that public school sex-ed was first introduced in the inner cities, in schools where many girls who did not have strong family structures were more vulnerable than most to sexual abuse, older boyfriends, and even familial sexual abuse. Most of the time it was the job of parents to teach their kids the ‘facts of life’, as it was then called. To claim that abstinence education results in unwanted pregnancy is nonsense. What does result in unwanted pregnancy is any implication that sex as something that teens can safely enjoy, no matter what program is in place. The culture is right outside the classroom, and the culture is where many kids nowadays get their values, if they can be called that! For abstinence to work best, it must be widely within the entire culture, not just at certain times and places. Duh!!!!
Don Gander, even though my children are grown and raising their own little ones, I have enough contact with the world around me here in our isolated settlement to see what poundings children, especially early teens face by peer expectations.
The church should be the foundation of moral behavior. I eat lunch late almost everyday at a fast food place near me. Also gathering there are kids from two Roman Catholic high schools as well as the local public high school. The difference is astounding with the catholic boys not hanging all over their female classmates like the “pubs†do.
The Episcopal Church should teach by lesson and example the faith of sexual purity and male-female respect for each others bodies. But the Episcopal Church is too busy blessing immoral behavior and teaching it as blessed alternative.
At a small meeting at my church after 2003’s debacle, I mentioned the effect on kids. One poor lady almost cried when she told about her worries over her children who were pounded enough already for her not to worry over introducing homosexuality as another sexual conduct to resist. The general attitude of the pro homosexual agenda people in the group was there was nothing to worry about.
Now we are reaping what we allowed to grow!
Error correction / additional comment: For abstinence to work best, it must be widely valued with the entire culture (as it was when I was a teenager) In the fifties and early sixties, (pre-Roe v. Wade) I’ve read that the entire unwed pregnancy rate was only about 5%, and I believe it as well. From 1964-1968, in my hometown high school of 600 students, only 3 girls were publically known to have gotten pregnant. There may have been a few others, but I never knew of any female student disappearing for a few months and re-appearing after giving birth.
Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL, was complicit with other founders in grossly exaggerating the ‘back-street’ abortion death statistics. He admitted to this some years later, after committing himself to Christ and after the advent of legal abortion. He later was involved, as I understand it, in making an anti-abortion film of the baby inside the womb, known as ‘The Silent Scream’.
It is birth control, the mores of ‘sexual revolution’, and public school sex-ed that have eliminated respect for abstinence and caused the teen pregnancy rate to skyrocket in a few short years.
Abstinence education has little to do with it, and can be no more than the ‘finger in the leaky dike’ under any circumstances.
No. 5, Don, the modeling of behaviour is the problem. From what I have read and see, statistically the majority of kids do not see positive role models, at school, at home, on TV, anywhere. Some very few might, but they would be in the minority.
Amen, Oldman and e-piscopalian. In those pre-Roe days, and I was there, a girl had to think about whether she’d like to see the guy’s face in the face of her child. It was an effective deterrent in many cases.
May I add a hypothesis about why, with the same “education,” New Zealand’s teen pregnancy rates are lower than ours? It is a matter of record that the illegitimate birth rate among black Americans is sky-high, something like two-thirds, and the same trend to a lesser degree is seen among lower-income Hispanics, particularly the illegal immigrants. The rapid decay of family structure in these communities is tragic. All Americans need to re-establish the moral dimension of sexual behavior.
And is our abortion rate high, perhaps, because our abortion laws are much more permissive than supposedly liberal Europe’s?
How do the churches deal with sexuality in the pre-teen and teen years? I know ours admits to capitulating to the concept that you simply cannot stop kids from having sex! When our priest asked a group of (admittedly older) women what they thought about teens having sex, no one said a word until I spoke up (I am NOT shy!) and said they shouldn’t! He joshed and opined I was talking like a doting grandmother. I guess that’s the way the Church sees sex education: “we’re in a new age now so get with it!”
Just wanted to point out that there are really two different conversations in this thread:
Conversation 1 has to do with whether “abstinence only” education is effective. As Amanda Robb points out, the answer is pretty universally “No.” Abstinence Only is different from Abstinence Plus and that is different from Comprehensive Sex ed.
Conversation 2 deals with how our society doesn’t really model, promote or value traditional sexual ethics anymore–and this is right-But, the diagnoses of this problem (lack of values) isn’t necessarily solved by attempting to attack that problem by foisting the policy answer of “abstinence only” on a group of folks who don’t buy the underlying message that pre-marital abstinence is a morally correct choice. If they don’t buy this, then educators have wasted several years of time trying to convince students that “purity really is better,” when they could have been minimizing risk through abstinence plus (preferable i.m.o.) or comprehensive sex ed. The changing of values business is best not left to public school educators, but rather to churches engaging in face-time with families.
The hypocrisy of a conservative, Christian nation like America, which swaggers about if it were the city on the hill – it takes your breath away.
Stop being pawns of the conservvative/liberal frame – start local with your kids & your community. Show up & be a witness to the transforming Risen Lord.
Or shut up.
Within the last six months I have seen artilces which state that the teen pregnancy rate is at a post-WWII low. However, illegitamacy rates among some sub-groups remains appaling (these are in large part non-teen single women). Albion’s Seed a great history/sociogy/policy science book suggests that out of wedlock pregnancy was common in colonial days (the difference then was that people then married and stayed married.
The difference I think that we are experiencing as a culture is that premarital sex is no longer verboten in society at large. It always occured but people are more open about it now.
I disagree with abstinence only because – 1) most people will engage in sexual intercourse at some point in their lives whether married or not – and High School is the last school attended by the majority of Americans (where else will they learn hard science about reproduction and reproductive health – there will always be boyfriends to explain the basic mechanics); 2) most teens either already disagree openly with abstinence or at some point prior to marriage will disagree with abstinence – since the average age of marriage is now north of 25 it is just not realistic. Absinence should be strongly stressed though – and a very hard pitch to delaying intimacy until such time as one is self supporting and/or emotionally ready to contemplate marriage and childrealing.
So because abstinence is “not realistic” or “most people will engage in sexual intercourse at some point in their lives whether married or not” we should eliminate abstinence education and stop encouraging it? Even when God suggests (strongly!) that sexual intercourse outside of marriage is downright wrong?
In other words, if folks can get away with sex outside of marriage, we might as well give up trying to stop it. Besides, that trying is too difficult anyway.
No – I am in favor of Abstinence Plus my comment was against abstinence only. Abstinence should be the focus – but schools should teach reproductive heath and the biology behind it – knowledge is power – ill informed adults and a high school Jr or Sr is about to become one are dangerous. Sex does not occur because sex ed is taught – it occurs because it is a basic human urge and one surrounded in cultural mystic. So dont eliminate abstinence education but dont not educate people on a major part of the human experience. Remember life is also sexually transmitted.
Also my point was that once you get the kids out of the teen years (and we should try valiantly to do so despite the fact that we will be largely unsuccessful) they will at some point hopefully marry – when do you propose that they learn about reproductive health if their families are not up to the task- are we suggesting that as adults they will go to Barnes and Noble or the library and read up on it?
I have pasted a passage from Wikipedia re teenage pregnancy – the Dutch may have the most libertine society in the west regarding sex and drugs- but I have been told by other sources a very comprehensive sex ed program :
“Netherlands
In contrast, the Netherlands has a low rate of births and abortions among teenagers. Compared to countries with higher teenage birth rates, the Dutch have a higher average age at first intercourse and increased levels of contraceptive use (including the “double Dutch” method of using both a hormonal contraception method and a condom).”
I for one would think that a proper course showing a need for abstinence and all the bad things that could happen to you along with the demystification of the act would be to everyone’s benefit – the Netherlands approach supports my theory.
I think that a lot of the vitriol between the “abstinence only” and the “comprehensive sex ed” camps comes from the following.
Both sides would, I think, rate the possible scenarios of “What teens should do” in this order of desirability:
1) Not have sex
2) Have protected sex
3) Have unprotected sex
The problem is that the “abstinence only” camp believes that by teaching comprehensive sex ed, including contraception, you give up any hope of (1) and send everyone straight to (2). While the “comprehensive sex ed” camp believes that by teaching abstinence-only, you rule out the possibility of (2) meaning that people who fail (1) go directly to (3).
Unfortunately not many people seem to believe that you can construct a program that makes a serious case for (1) but also provides enough information to make (2) the fallback position.
That’s very well put Ross. The values question is still a vexing one, but high school health educators shouldn’t be the point person for turning back the sexual revolution.
I agree with Ross – well put. Ross’ scenario is what I understand to be abstinence plus.