Obama To Cut Abstinence Education

Sex ed programs in the schools is always a "hot topic" (sorry!) for debate. Last week, the AP reported that President Obama wants to cut more than $100 million in spending on abstinence-only programs, preferring to redirect the money to pregnancy-reduction programs that do not offer abstinence as an option.

The AP story continues:

The proposal in Obama's 2010 budget plan released Thursday could run into opposition from conservatives.

Administration budget documents say Obama wants to redirect funding from "abstinence-only education programs to evidence-based and promising teen pregnancy prevention programs."

Obama wants to eliminate a $38 million state grant program plus a nearly $100 million pot of money that is supposed to be spent for abstinence education at the direction the Administration for Children and Families, part of the Health and Human Services Department.

He would create a new $110 million "teen pregnancy prevention initiative," plus direct $50 million to states for pregnancy prevention programs.

The most positive results, Obama's budget plan asserts, come from programs that "provide a range of services in addition to comprehensive sex education, such as after school activities, academic support or service learning."

Discussing abstinence as an option for birth control has always been controversial, usually eliciting eye rolling at best to very heated responses at worst. However, one needs to consider that there is a difference between "abstinence only" and "abstinence-based" programs. The "abstinence-based" programs are those that emphasize abstinence but also provide information about other forms of birth control and disease prevention. Knowing human nature, I personally feel that "abstinence-based" would be the wiser choice: kids should have all the facts in case they feel they cannot abstain from sexual activity. But, to immediately spurn the idea of telling kids that waiting is better is very short-sighted, incomplete information.

Critics of discussing abstinence in sex ed classes seem to think they have the market cornered in comprehensive and effective programming. However, anyone else out there remember how quickly last spring's story was buried? The CDC issued a report stating that 1 in 4 teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease (STD), and that 1 in 2 Black girls was infected.


Here's what USAToday reported:

CHICAGO (AP) — At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.

A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls ages 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20% among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40%. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.

For many, the numbers likely seem "overwhelming because you're talking about nearly half of the sexually experienced teens at any one time having evidence of an STD," said Dr. Margaret Blythe, an adolescent medicine specialist at Indiana University School of Medicine and head of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on adolescence.

It seemed that the story was quickly buried with the public -- sex ed people in particular -- refusing to recognize a very real problem:

sex education in general is failing!

Sadly, it didn't seem to kick up much of a fuss. For example, here's what John M. Grohol, Psy.D. commented at Psych Central: After giving readers a brief synopsis of the CDC's findings, he ended glibly with "What more can I add to this, other than to say, “Use condoms!”."

I would expect something more intellectual and insightful from a Psy.D. than a smart aleck wisecrack. (By the way, Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central.) Shouldn't people like him ask more profound questions like "Why are our programs failing?" "Why are kids not following the information they're given? "What's preventing kids from grasping and implementing the information?" "What competing voices and influences are there?" "Do we combat those competing voices and how, or do we let kids ford ahead on their own with nothing more than Vulcan-like well wishes of "live long and prosper?"