Reply #14: Here's some stuff-it's longish

[miss_kitty]

From Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/02/1513230&mode=thread&tid=25

Abstinence-Only Programs Spread Misinformation About AIDS & Abortion
A new Congressional report has found that many students participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught misleading and inaccurate information about abortion, homosexuality and AIDS. Students have been taught that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for AIDS, and that touching a person's genitals can "result in pregnancy." This according to a report in the Washington Post. The Congressional report found that for the past three years, the Bush administration has been strongly promoting these abstinence programs even though they frequently relied on medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists. The Congressional report examined the 13 most widely used abstinence-only curricula; only two of the program were deemed to be accurate. Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman of California said, "Something is seriously wrong when federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health facts."

From the Numbers Wizards (bending stats into the info they want, I believe):

http://sectionq.com/Facts/abstinence_as_reason.htm

New Study Shows Abstinence as Reason for Reduced Teen Pregnancy Rate
More teens are saying no to sex outside of marriage, and that fact is the primary reason for the drop in teen birth and pregnancy rates in recent years according to new scientific research. The peer-reviewed study, published in April 2003 in the journal, Adolescent and Family Health, flies in the face of previous reports attributing the decline to increased use of contraception.
The report cited abstinence as the top factor in recent drops in the teen pregnancy rate. Overall, the study found that 100 percent of the drop in birthrates and 67 percent of the drop in pregnancy rates could be attributed to single teens heeding the message of abstinence education.
Joanna Mohn, M.D., the study’s principal researcher, said the new study shows the factors making the greatest contribution to the decline in overall 15- to 19-year-old birth and pregnancy rates were an increase in abstinence and a decrease in the percentage of married teens. In 1991, the teen birthrate was 62 births per 1,000 girls. By 1995, the rate had dropped to 50 births per 1,000 girls. The pregnancy rate per 1,000 girls dropped from 116 to 93 during the same period.
“It is time for pro-condom advocacy groups to stop lying to the public about the real reason we are seeing such a sharp decline in teen birth and pregnancy rates,” said Peter Brandt, Director of Issues Response for Focus on the Family. “Abstinence has always been the only sure-fire way to prevent pregnancy and teens are proving they have out-smarted adults on this one. This study should be an incentive to every member of Congress to vote for the most effective prevention program for our teen – abstinence education.”
The Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which included $50 million per year for abstinence education, expired last year, and debate on its renewal will begin in Congress soon.

From The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0%2C3604%2C1213875%2C00.html

Joy of sex education

America's virgin soldiers are on their way - ignoring the dangers of abstinence for teenagers

---snip---
No one could dispute that thousands of teenagers in Britain and the United States are suffering as a result of sex before marriage. Teenage pregnancies are overwhelmingly concentrated at the bottom of the social scale: the teenage daughters of unskilled manual labourers are 10 times as likely to become pregnant as middle-class girls. According to the United Nations agency Unicef, women born into poverty are twice as likely to stay that way if they have their children too soon. They are more likely to be unemployed, to suffer from depression and to become dependent on alcohol or drugs.

Were we to accept the conservatives' version, we would expect the nations in which sex education and access to contraception are most widespread to be those that suffer most from teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. The truth is the other way around.

The two western countries at the top of the disaster league, the United States and the United Kingdom, are those in which conservative campaigns are among the strongest and sex education and access to contraception are among the weakest. The US, the UN Population Fund's figures show, is the only rich nation stuck in the middle of the third world block, with 53 births per 1,000 teenagers - a record worse than those of India, the Philippines and Rwanda. The UK comes next with 20. The nations the conservatives would place at the top of the list are clumped at the bottom. Germany and Norway produce 11 babies per 1,000 teenagers, Finland eight, Sweden and Denmark seven and the Netherlands five.

Unicef's explanation is pretty unequivocal. Sweden, for example, radically changed its sex education policies in 1975. "Recommendations of abstinence and sex only within marriage were dropped, contraceptive education was made explicit, and a nationwide network of youth clinics was established specifically to provide confidential contraceptive advice and free contraceptives ... Over the next two decades, Sweden saw its teenage birth rate fall by 80 per cent." Sexually transmitted diseases, in contrast to the rising rates in the UK and the US, declined by 40% in the 1990s.

"Studies of the Dutch experience," Unicef continues, "have concluded that the underlying reason for success has been the combination of a relatively inclusive society with more open attitudes towards sex and sex education, including contraception." Requests for contraceptives there "are not associated with shame or embarrassment", and "the media is willing to carry explicit messages" about them that are "designed for young people". This teeming cesspool has among the lowest abortion and teenage birth rates on earth.

America and the UK, by contrast, are "less inclusive societies" where "contraceptive advice and services may be formally available, but in a 'closed' atmosphere of embarrassment and secrecy". The UK has a higher teenage pregnancy rate not because there is more sex or abortion, but because of "lower rates of contraceptive use".