From today’s TFN News Clips:
“Now we know that after 10 years and over $1.5 billion in abstinence-only funding, the U.S. is lurching backwards on teen sexual health.”
— James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth, a Washington advocacy group, commenting on a new report that shows a rise in the rate of teen pregnancies
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I’m sorry but a quote is only true when kept within the context of its circumstances.
“Contributors include an over-sexualized culture, lack of involved and positive role models, and the dominant message that teen sex is expected and without consequences,” Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association, who blamed the increase on several factors.
“One of the nation’s shining success stories of the past two decades is in danger of unraveling,” said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “Clearly, the nation’s collective efforts to convince teens to postpone childbearing must be more creative and more intense, and they must begin today.”
The Wshington Post
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
With our deficit soaring, we cannot afford these atavistic follies.
Our society can’t afford the untold tragedy these wasted efforts have created.
“Clearly, the nation’s collective efforts to convince teens to postpone childbearing must be more creative and more intense, and they must begin today.”
Exactly true. And putting “abstinence-only” in the dumpster is an excellent first step. A little creativity in showing kids that parenthood at 15 is Not A Bunch Of Fun would be very useful. Showing them World War II training-film pictures of tertiary syphilis cases is not so useful. Abstinence can work – it worked for me until I was twenty. (I was so shy I only asked about two girls out to the movies…..) But “abstinence-only” has been shown NOT to be effective. And when it tells lies, like “condoms don’t work,” things get even worse. Then, STD’s and pregnancies actually increase a year after the class is over.
Tanya:
God rest her departed soul, my fundie Aunt LaUna had an answer to your concern way back in 1970. She said, “If I had my way I would put every teenage girl in the United States on birth control pills.” Something like that combined with comprehensive sex education in our schools would go a long way towards preventing teenage STDs and pregnancies—regardless of those other cultural factors you mentioned. Certainly, we could work on those too.
The pregnancy rates and std rates tell part of the story.
There’s another part of this story that has to do with the psychological turmoil caused by the prudery behind “abstinence only”.
The guilt.
The alienation.
The confusion.
The misogyny.
The violence.
I think calling it “ignorance only” makes much more sense.
“Contributors include an over-sexualized culture, lack of involved and positive role models, and the dominant message that teen sex is expected and without consequences,”…
lack of involved and positive role models…
The super-preachy “involved and positive role models” keep getting busted with prostitutes, meth, child porn, pocketfuls of the church’s cash, etc.