Abstinence programs provide accurate information, effective in ...

You are right. Just say no. Teens and parents must pray to God and not do it. Sex is only for married men and women and for when babies are desired. Just say no. No reason to have sex and so many reasons not to have. Please pray about it and save yourself for God's marriage.

Markus

Shenzhen, China

Do you teach students how to use a Condom? Do you teach them to get tested before engaging with a partner? And get tested after? Do you instructs students to have their partners tested prior to becoming active? Do you teach that the urges are natural?

The fact is that in either education it is the margins that are really going to see the real negative side effects of STDs or unwanted pregnancies. But with safe-sex education these margins will the lesser. As the word implies,'abstinence-only' does not provide the students the skills they need when having sex. I will not know how to protect themselves properly when having sex. The margins of student who actually engage in sex with only 'abstinence-only' education are likely to get pregnant or get a STD.

Citizen

Yes wrote:

You are right. Just say no. Teens and parents must pray to God and not do it. Sex is only for married men and women and for when babies are desired. Just say no. No reason to have sex and so many reasons not to have. Please pray about it and save yourself for God's marriage.

You are not being realistic about this. Think more pragmatically and you might realize that future scenerios will require a countless array of programs and facilities because you thought that "just say no" would solve the problem initially.

Indy Educator

Indianapolis Public Schools uses abstinence only sex education programs almost exclusively, yet the district has THE HIGHEST rate of teen pregnancy in Central Indiana. More than 75% of IPS high school students have had sexual intercourse and yet IPS employees and school health clinic workers cannot counsel girls or boys about the use of birth-control, including the use of condoms.

And people wonder why Indianapolis was the Syphilis Capital of the world and why Aids is such a huge problem among the urban poor.

Cindy

What a wonderful article. My children go to a Catholic School that uses the CPR+ program and my boys have learned so much. No you don't teach them to put on condoms, but neither does the DARE program teach kids to use a needle to do drugs just in case they do drugs so they can use the needle accurately so they don't harm themselves even more. Do you teach your children how to mix drinks correctly, just in case they drink? Why do all these people who say we can't teach our children to say no to sex, say we can teach them to say no to everything else. We make our children believe they are no better than animals, that only the urge and fulfilling the urge is the only thing that matters. I teach my children they are better than that and that they are smart enough to keep their emotions in check. That is what God wants!

Markus

Shenzhen, China

Cindy wrote:

What a wonderful article. My children go to a Catholic School that uses the CPR+ program and my boys have learned so much. No you don't teach them to put on condoms, but neither does the DARE program teach kids to use a needle to do drugs just in case they do drugs so they can use the needle accurately so they don't harm themselves even more. Do you teach your children how to mix drinks correctly, just in case they drink? Why do all these people who say we can't teach our children to say no to sex, say we can teach them to say no to everything else. We make our children believe they are no better than animals, that only the urge and fulfilling the urge is the only thing that matters. I teach my children they are better than that and that they are smart enough to keep their emotions in check. That is what God wants!

Actually responsible education should teach the effects of alcohol on the body. A young teenager can easily overdose on alcohol if they don't realize to stop. A full-fledges educational program can incorporate everything that is taught in 'abstinence-only' class and still teach condom usage. We have been telling kids "no" for centuries but they still do it. You have to face that reality. I personally know multiple people who got pregnant in their teens. And these kids came from religiously strict households.

Citizen

Cindy wrote:

What a wonderful article. My children go to a Catholic School that uses the CPR+ program and my boys have learned so much. No you don't teach them to put on condoms, but neither does the DARE program teach kids to use a needle to do drugs just in case they do drugs so they can use the needle accurately so they don't harm themselves even more. Do you teach your children how to mix drinks correctly, just in case they drink? Why do all these people who say we can't teach our children to say no to sex, say we can teach them to say no to everything else. We make our children believe they are no better than animals, that only the urge and fulfilling the urge is the only thing that matters. I teach my children they are better than that and that they are smart enough to keep their emotions in check. That is what God wants!

Can you get past "what god wants" and start looking into what's best in our states intrests....and our state is made up of many people where "god" is non-existant, like myself, or "god" in their culture is a little more complicated then your christian beliefs. I suggest you play your own "devils advocate", and see what problems you potentially face when dealing with teen pregnancy and the social challenges that come with that terrirory, then, look at the value of teaching contaceptive birth control and planned parenthood. You might find answers to your abortion woes by understanding that making abortion illegal is not the answer either. There are programs that need to be funded to offer free healthcare to poor mothers, and the morning after pill, and less restrictions on adoption policies allowing people other than married men and women to adopt. Free healthcare for the infant and so on and so on. Future generations will benefit from our foresight.

John Huey

A recent review of studies that met the criterion that the study was well designed showed that abstinence only programs were not effective in changing teens sexual behavior. The studies that have shown abstinence only having a positive impact limited their focus on the knowledge of the teen. The students may have passed the final exam but then they went out and hooked up just like they would have anyway.

The article mentions that CDC statistics show a decline in teen pregnacies. However, this is just a continuation of a trend that started back in the mid-seventies well before absentience only.

Currently, the rest of the developed world has comprehensive sex education programs and much lower rates of teen pregnancy, abortions and std's. The US continues to have rates that look like a third world country. We should get out of the 19th century with respect to sex education.

Get Real

There is no good scientific evidence that teaching abstinence to teenagers will by itself prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, say the authors of a recent study. Yet they found that comprehensive sex education is declining and that more youngsters are being taught nothing more than abstinence.

More than $1 billion in federal aid has been poured into state-run abstinence-only programs in the past decade after the Bush administration decided there was an imbalance that favored comprehensive sex education and slighted abstinence. State school systems accepting the federal money are required to teach that sexual activity outside marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects, and that a married, monogamous relationship is the expected standard.

The recent study, by a team of scholars at the Guttmacher Institute in New York headed by Laura Duberstein Lindberg, looked at instruction between 1995 and 2002 nationwide and found that "teenagers were significantly more likely to have received instruction about how to say no to sex than ... birth control methods" and that abstinence was being pushed in sex ed classes "in the absence of any substantial scientific evidence supporting the effectiveness of the approach."

Published in the December issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, a leading journal, the article attributed the trend to the federal funding, which since 1996 "has shifted toward programs that teach only abstinence and restrict other information."

Under an education code revision passed in 2003, teachers in California school districts are required to teach HIV/AIDS prevention and are also permitted to teach comprehensive sex education, as virtually all districts do. But exactly what districts teach is up to them, so long as they adhere to state guidelines requiring that their information be medically accurate and that they provide information about contraception while emphasizing that abstinence is the only sure method to avoid pregnancy.

Douglas Kirby, the author of a far-reaching 2005 survey of the effectiveness of sex education programs worldwide, said that the Guttmacher Institute conclusion was "not surprising" but was "very disturbing. We've put more than $1 billion into abstinence-only (education) when we do not know whether these programs work," he said.

Among the 83 studies on the effectiveness of various sex education programs that Kirby reviewed, he found six studies of abstinence-only programs that met his research standards. "While that was too few to reach any conclusions," he wrote, none of the six programs delayed the age at which the students first had sex.

"The jury is still out," Kirby said in an interview. "At the same time, abstinence-only programs are replacing programs where we have good evidence that they do work."

The debate -- as much cultural and political as it is scientific -- over the most effective way to help young people avoid early sexual activity, pregnancy, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases, and their economic and societal consequences, is taking place amid trends that indicate the sexual practices of teens are changing.

Since 1991, teen pregnancies in the United States have declined by one-third, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers at the CDC also have found that 46.8 percent of high school students say they have had intercourse, a 13 percent decline over that same period.

Another recent survey by the Guttmacher Institute revealed that 95 percent of Americans say they had premarital sex.

"On the other hand, we know that people in this country greatly value sexual intimacy regardless if it's in marriage. So it's not accurate to say that abstinence is the value of the United States when it's not held by 95 percent of the population."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...

The Master Blaster

Citizen wrote:

<quoted text> Can you get past "what god wants" and start looking into what's best in our states intrests....and our state is made up of many people where "god" is non-existant, like myself, or "god" in their culture is a little more complicated then your christian beliefs.

I love it when people deny the existence of God and then tell people who are believers to be quiet.
Well, Citizen, she has as much right to our beliefs as you do. If you want to deny God. So be it. That is your right. But, don't go around telling believers to clam up just because you don't like it.
We have freedom of speech. And we will use it as much as we please.
So, deny God all you want. It's your choice to make. Just remember. Some choices aren't always the right ones.

Get Real

Abstinence educaton isn't about God, it is not part of the equation. We need real solid education about how to prevent pregnancy, along with the many reasons for not being a teen parent.
Teen pregnancy is one of the sure fire ways to insure that you will live a life of poverty, we have to break this cycle.

IMHO God loves us all and wants each of his precious children to be born into a home where they are wanted, not as a punishment for having sex. Why would God use an innocent child's birth to be a punishment for sex outside marriage? God is about forgiveness, reread the parable of the prodigal son.

Citizen

The Master Blaster wrote:

<quoted text>
I love it when people deny the existence of God and then tell people who are believers to be quiet.
Well, Citizen, she has as much right to our beliefs as you do. If you want to deny God. So be it. That is your right. But, don't go around telling believers to clam up just because you don't like it.
We have freedom of speech. And we will use it as much as we please.
So, deny God all you want. It's your choice to make. Just remember. Some choices aren't always the right ones.

Did you read the rest of the post...the other 9/10ths that dealt with the subject at hand, or did you stop after you read "leave god out"? I think you missed the point.

Citizen

Citizen wrote:

<quoted I suggest you play your own "devils advocate", and see what problems you potentially face when dealing with teen pregnancy and the social challenges that come with that terrirory, then, look at the value of teaching contaceptive birth control and planned parenthood. You might find answers to your abortion woes by understanding that making abortion illegal is not the answer either. There are programs that need to be funded to offer free healthcare to poor mothers, and the morning after pill, and less restrictions on adoption policies allowing people other than married men and women to adopt. Free healthcare for the infant and so on and so on. Future generations will benefit from our foresight.

I suggest you read this part, Master Blaster, this is what we are talking about. Not religion.

The Master Blaster

Sen Sam Bareback wrote:

<quoted text>
LUNATIC

Don't criticize what you don't understand.

Intellectual

What a biased article!
There is no substitute for Effective Sex Education!
According to http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications...

Each year, U.S. teens experience as many as 850,000 pregnancies, and youth under age 25 experience about 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
By age 18, 70 percent of U.S. females and 62 percent of U.S. males have initiated vaginal sex. Comprehensive sex education is effective at assisting young people to make healthy decisions about sex and to adopt healthy sexual behaviors.
No abstinence-only-until-marriage program has been shown to help teens delay the initiation of sex or to protect themselves when they do initiate sex.
Yet, the U.S. government has spent over one billion dollars supporting abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
Although the U.S. government ignores it, adolescents have a fundamental human right to accurate and comprehensive sexual health information.
Comprehensive Sex Education Is Effective, Does Not Promote Sexual Risks.
• Research has identified highly effective sex education and HIV prevention programs that affect multiple behaviors and/or achieve positive health impacts. Behavioral outcomes have included delaying the initiation of sex as well as reducing the frequency of sex, the number of new partners, and the incidence of unprotected sex, and/or increasing the use of condoms and contraception among sexually active participants.
• Long-term impacts have included lower STI and/or pregnancy rates.
• No highly effective sex education or HIV prevention education program is eligible for federal funding because mandates prohibit educating youth about the benefits of condoms and contraception.
• Evaluations of comprehensive sex education and HIV/ STI prevention programs show that they do not increase rates of sexual initiation, do not lower the age at which youth initiate sex, and do not increase the frequency of sex or the number of sex partners among sexually active youth.
• Between 1991 and 2004, the U.S. teen birth rate fell from 62 to 41per 1,000 female teens.
• Some experts attribute 75 percent of the decline to increased contraceptive use and 25 percent to delayed initiation of sex. Others credit increased contraceptive use and delayed initiation of sex about equally. Regardless, contraceptive use has been critical to reducing teenage pregnancy.
Abstinence-Only Programs Are Dangerous, Ineffective, and Inaccurate.
The Society for Adolescent Medicine recently declared that “abstinence-only programs threaten fundamental human rights to health, information, and life.”
• According to Columbia University researchers, virginity pledge programs increase pledge-takers’ risk for STIs and pregnancy. The study concluded that 88 percent of pledge-takers initiated sex prior to marriage even though some delayed sex for a while. Rates of STIs among pledge-takers and non-pledgers were similar, even though pledge-takers initiated sex later. Pledge-takers were less likely to seek STI testing and less likely to use contraception when they did have sex.

The Master Blaster

Citizen wrote:

<quoted text> I suggest you read this part, Master Blaster, this is what we are talking about. Not religion.

She has her viewpoint. You have yours.
If her way involves religion, then that is her right. You disagree. That is your right.
For most believers in God, their religion is part of who they are and the way they live. I see nothing wrong with it.
You don't have to agree. It's up to you how you live your life.
Hope you have a good week.

Anon

London, UK

The Master Blaster wrote:

<quoted text>
For most believers in God, their religion is part of who they are and the way they live. I see nothing wrong with it.
You don't have to agree. It's up to you how you live your life.

How - ironic. You're asking for the right to your belief and thus to lead your life the way you want to lead (by the rules of God). Yet abstinence education is enforcing YOUR way of life on those who might not necessarily agree.
Safe-sex education isn't about encouraging children to have sex, it's about teaching people who will eventually have sex how to do it safely and responsibily. Abstinence education simply teaches them "not to do it".
Not to mention the eventual problem of all these students eventually having sex as adults (which is the best case scenario, that they will all wait till they're older, more matured and more ready)- will there be classes THEN to teach them about safe sex and how to use a condom, what the Pill is, what emergency contraceptives they might have to procure?
Because if your answer is that these adults will only have sex when they're married - and only have sex when they want children - then not only are you deluded, but you're enforcing a view of the world and your view of your religion on other people who don't necessarily agree.
What gives you that right? What gives the current administration that right?
On an alternate note, in the years that abstinence education has been used rather than the covnentional safe-sex education, I have, for the first time in my life, had to field statements from teenagers (18 years old no less, who usually were taught to know better) such as "you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex" or "you can get pregnant if you kiss too much" or "if you take a shower immediately after, you won't get pregnant".
Evidently, abstinence education doesn't teach these students as thoroughly as the article implies.

Citizen

The Master Blaster wrote:

<quoted text>
She has her viewpoint. You have yours.
If her way involves religion, then that is her right. You disagree. That is your right.
For most believers in God, their religion is part of who they are and the way they live. I see nothing wrong with it.
You don't have to agree. It's up to you how you live your life.
Hope you have a good week.

Good, then I hope SHE doesn't get pregnant, but we are not talking about just HER.

Carol Sisson

AOL

Ms. Meier brought up some excellent points about how we can offer our children the safest and best road for their future. When teens are empowered with the truth and given personal responsibility for their decisions, they are capable of self-control. Thank goodness for programs like CPR that do not propogate lies and claim that risky behavior is unavoidable.

The Master Blaster