Last week’s episode of Parks and Recreation took on the ridiculousness of abstinence-only-until-marriage policies. Between jokes about old people having sex and mushy bananas, the episode provided some good information and made important points about the sex education debate.
Under a new law requiring Mississippi schools to choose either an abstinence-plus or an abstinence-only policy, 71 schools chose the broader policy. This is progress, even for Mississippi.
New research shows–yet again–that formal comprehensive sex education leads teens to delay their first sexual experience and makes them much more likely to use birth control, make more informed choices about their partners, and reduces risky sex.
In the name of fiscal responsibility, House Republicans suggest cutting teen pregnancy programs, the CDC budget, and Title X family planning. But, interestingly, they’re bringing back funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
The Illinois House is using the conservative Agriculture Committee to pass anti-choice bills, North Dakota is looking at a personhood bill, and Sen. Lautenberg and Rep. Lee introduce a bill banning federal funding of ineffective abstinence programs.
Whether Mullarkey intended her statements to represent the official position of Project SOS or her own private reflections, they reveal the core beliefs of the leader of one of Florida’s major abstinence-only-until-marriage institutions.
One hundred and twenty girls in the Midland, TX school district–including one as young as twelve (!)–are in the family way so far this school year.
December 1, 2009, marks President Obama’s first World AIDS Day in the White House and the first World AIDS Day for the newly elected Congress. The time is right for a frank assessment of his first year in the fight against global AIDS as President. This analysis focuses on the funding and policy decisions the Administration has made since taking office in January 2009, and assesses the human impact of those decisions.
Over 80 percent of ab-only curricula provides misleading, medically inaccurate information about contraception and sex, yet the Senate finance committee voted to fund these programs. What part of “they don’t work” is hard to understand?
The real goal of abstinence-only programs is not to prevent teen pregnancies or STDs and or even to prevent premarital sex – it’s to make sure that all people get married.
