Well, that's quit obvious. The one thing that I don't see in a lot of communities, though is the support for a teen if she/he does decide to become a parent whether it was planned or not. I got pregnant my senior year of high school and it was a very positive thing for me ... and no one or any type of organization tends to focus on that. There's a lot of focus on nuclear families when it comes to parenting. And I am now 25 and my daughter is 6 and I can full-heartedly admit it's HARD ... but I've also had a great community of teen mama friends around the country that has tremendoulsy helped.

But yes, abstience funding is worthless. Really, it's all about education on these issues from choosing abstinence to having safe sex, using bc, using ec ... etc etc

When I was in middle school, there was a girl in one of my classes who passed some note to her friend saying she was going to go have sex with her boyfriend after school. Somehow it ended up on the floor, and our teacher found it on the floor. She took all of the girls who were on that side of the room, myself included, out of the class and told us that we were all beautiful flowers and each time we had sex before we were married we were ripping a petal off of ourselves. I was 12 at the time and didn't think much of it then, because I wasn't the one who wrote the note, but now when I look back on it I get steamed. The girl went on and had sex anyway, and ended up pregnant. Clearly this abstinence bullshit doesn't work, and if our teacher had told her to use a condom instead of slut-shaming her, she might have saved that girl a lot of trouble. She was 12. Sit on that for awhile.

Reading posts (or articles and studies) like this always makes me really angry. How political leaders (i.e. Bush and the gang) IGNORE this kind of information? How is acceptable for them to say, "Nevermind all that research, I believe in abstience and I'll only support laws that fall in line with that." It's just so ridiculous. These are research studies! Telling us how to protect kids! You can't just ignore them!

He should talk to his daughter.

I didn't learn much about any type of sex ed in junior high and I never remember learning about abortion. I don't think that is fair ... we should learn about everything.

I think we learned about webbed toes in junior high health class. I really don't remember much else. We had a good, comprehensive sex-ed course in 9th grade, but that was well over 10 years ago. It's probably gone the way of all of our other civil liberties and rights in the past 7 years.

I didn't need a scientific study to tell me that abstience-only education doesn't work. (I'm really glad that it exists though, don't get me wrong.) Do these people REMEMBER high school? High school kids are interested in two things:
1. Trying to have sex
2. Finding out who has had sex and talking about it

Telling them, "don't have sex,kthnx" is silly.
What a waste.

I can't wait to see what the pro-abstinence folks will say about this.

I can hear it already:

"lalalalala. We can't hear you."

That, or:

*crickets chirping*

Roy.

Damn you. Beat me to it. Ah well...

But yeah. Like any other study that disagrees with their completely illogical, faith based view (faith as in "believing something with no demonstrable proof," not faith as in "faith in a higher being"), they'll just...ignore it.

SHORTER RESEARCH STUDY

SCIENCE: IT WORKS.

COMPREHENSIVE SEX ED: IT ALSO WORKS.

ABSTINENCE-BASED SEX ED: IT DON'T WORK SO GOOD.

-----------------------------

This definitely lines up with my own experience in middle school and high school. The only health lessons we had on human sexuality before sophomore year of high school were about growing breasts and getting your period (dunno what-all they were telling the boys about during those sessions). In high school health class, we had one short unit that touched briefly on condoms and contraception but mostly talked about how they were ineffective and abstinence was the only way to go. Masturbation and non-hetero-sex were never mentioned (I am bisexual, but was not out enough to ask questions at the time).

One of the guys in that class already had a kid a couple years old. I was the only virign in the bunch.

Exactly HOW much use was that class?

I know the right wingers want abstinence only education and also want teenagers to have less sex. Is that what we want, too? Personally, I think that as long as they are using protection and feeling good about their choices, teenagers should have as much sex as they want.

Jessica and all other fellow feminists, I am not in the least bit surprised, especially knowing that Allendale County, S.C. -- just to my south -- has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation.

I think that schools should lose all Title I funding for having abstinence-only sex education programs.

If they can ignore the insurmountable evidence for evolution, they can ignore the insurmountable evidence that abstinence-only sex ed fails.

Even the good sex ed programs are flawed. We actually learned about birth control in my class-- but not where to get it or how to use it, and not until some kids were already having sex anyway. The current system needs a complete overhaul-- and we could do it easily and relatively inexpensively, if the Morality Police would just get out of the way.

indiglow11: While I think that most teenagers should wait until they're a bit more mature and more capable of handling problems that might arise (like condoms breaking or forgetting to take the pill or an ex telling people at school to embarrass them), that's between them and to a lesser extent their parents. Some can handle it fine, I'm sure. Whatever one wants, though, we have a responsibility to teach them what they need to know.

from the National Abstinence Education Association:

Emerging Answers Begs the Question of Objectivity

like the classy folks they are, the NAEA decided to attack the credentials of the most accomplished researcher in the field...

I've always thought that it was interesting that amid all the arguing over whether or not teenagers could handle information about sex, the right wing doesn't talk about raising the age of consent to 18. I'm in Michigan, where it's 16. I don't know if two years would make a difference - how many teens become sexually active before the age of consent now? - but it at least would be a statement that sex is for adults, not teens. I guess that's my biggest problem with abstinence-only education: It leaves our the fact that I may not get married, and the fact that I may not want to 'start a family' on my honeymoon...
Surprisingly, even though I went to school in a conservative town, we still received comprehensive sex education, although abortion was barely mentioned. We still learned, and were tested on, the different kinds of contraceptives.

Abstinence-only religious folk always make me smirk a little bit, if only because of the fond memories I have of learning about sexual health and contraceptives with a group of other grade school kids, between grades 4-8, in my church one Sunday after the service. This was in addition to the curriculum-required health classes in school, of course, but it still makes me grin. For all the problems with Presbyterianism specifically, and organized religion as a whole, my church as pretty darn fabulous.

this & the Texas news really bring home how little the right cares about solving any unwanted outcomes involving teen sex, for the sake of saying "NO."

See my piece on NPR's Justice Talking site about this: http://communities.justicetalking.org/blogs/day07/default.aspx

I believe right-wingers get a little confused about two words:

innocence and ignorance.

Look, they both have three whole syllables. How can you blame them?

But neither innocence nor ignorance is any defense. Depriving girls of full knowledge of their sexuality and what they can do to protect themselves is not protection, and it will not stop them from having sex -- or from being raped.

Would we stop people from riding motorcycles if we kept them in the dark about how to use motorcycle helmets and simply repeated, over and over, "Motorcycles are baaad"?

I went to all-girls Catholic school, and I got more comprehensive sex ed than most public school kids I've met in college. Part of that had to do with scaring us into chastity, but we covered ways to prevent disease and pregancy as well, not just the risks of sexual activity. My friends at the all-boys school down the road were calling me for advice on where/how to get tested for STDs a year after we graduated. It's just pretty sad when a midwestern high school funded by the Catholic Church has better sex education than public schools in Texas.

So I'm new to this whole blogging thing so bear with me please :)

I just wanted to bring up the point that this whole sex ed. issue is a highly gendered issue. Wickedzoot pointed out, the boys at a similar [meaning all boy religious school] came to her for sex information. Why were they not receiving comparable sex ed.? It takes two to tango. And while not every sexual encounter is of a heterosexual nature, some are. So what about the boys?

I feel like those in favor of abstinence only education are completely and overtly discriminating against females. How does/can this make sense? It's like "Hello, I'm not having sex with myself... Thanks"

Here's the thing I love about abstinence-only sex ed: it says "don't have sex until you're married!" but then completely ignores the, "okay, so what happens once you're married?" side of things. If these people really cared about kids they'd push sex ed-- maybe with a thick layer of moralizing on top, but reliable information would still be invaluable. But instead their obsession is with controlling the sexual behavior of teens. (And ironically, they can't even accomplish that.)

From the site Simon linked to: "Kirby's study documented that not a single comprehensive sex ed program increased the knowledge of abstinence to teens."

Wait, what? Increase the knowledge of abstience? Is there a LACK of knowledge about abstinence when teens get comprehensive sex ed?

What a lame argument.

As I have been inspired by your "About Us" section, I would like to introduce myself as one of those right-wingers whom you wish to reach. I will rarely, if ever, agree with what you write. Never-the-less, I hope you have the courage to post this and other responses of mine.

I believe the posting by Jessica concerning abstinence-only programs to be extremely irresponsible and mis-leading to what I assume is a largely teen population. Teens, especially girls, need to be told the whole truth concerning the findings of these studies. Their healthy, future development depends on it.

First, it appears that Jessica does not even quote the actual study itself. Rather she quotes an Associated Press article written by H. Josef Hebert. She conveniently leaves out the portion of this article that says, "The sponsors of the study...also acknowledge that ETR Associates (Douglas Kirby, the author of the study, is a senior research scientist at ETR) developed and markets several of the sex ed curricula reviewed in the report." That is a HUGE conflict of interest.

Furthermore, Jessica refers to the report as a new study. In fact the study was completed in May 2001, over SIX YEARS AGO!

She concludes that the report is evidence abstinence-only education is "a big fat waste of money." This is a complete mis-representation of the conclusion reached by the study itself! It says, "...based on the relatively meager evidence available, one should not conclude that all abstinence-only programs either do or do not delay sex...It (Emerging Answers) suggested that some abstinence-only programs may be effective while others may not."

Dr. Kirby himself says further, "Increasingly it seems likely to this author that sooner or later studies will produce strong evidence that some abstinence-only programs are effective at delaying sex and that others are not."

Your young readers will be better served when they are informed of the ENTIRE truth. Teens, boys and girls, need not be led by feminism or any other ideology that serves to drive the wedges of hostility and mistrust between them. Kids, when you are troubled by these important issues seek out and consult with moral, strong, grounded, trustworthy adults who have your best interests at heart.