Liberals are touting a study released by Mathematica Policy Research last week that claims abstinence-only education is not effective in delaying sexual activity among unmarried youth. But family advocates say many other studies show that abstinence education keeps kids safe and healthy.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hired Mathematica to evaluate the impact of federal funding of abstinence-only programs -- totaling $87.5 million since 1998. Recipients of that Title V money are required to teach abstinence as the “expected standard” and that sex outside of marriage may “have harmful psychological and physical effects.”
Mathematica declared the programs it examined ineffective and possibly medically inaccurate.
Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA), pointed out that Mathematica only looked at four programs out of more than 700.
“The field of abstinence has significantly grown and evolved since that time,” she said. “The results demonstrated in the Mathematica study are not representative of the abstinence-education community as a whole.”
Huber added that more than 30 studies show positive trends.
Linda Klepacki, analyst for sexual health at Focus on the Family Action, said there's been no effort to show that condom-based education works..
“Why are abstinence programs the only type of sex education being targeted for evaluation?” she asked. “We call for the immediate evaluation of all sex-education programs to determine medical accuracy and the effectiveness of programs in decreasing teen sexual-activity rates, teen-pregnancy rates and sexually transmitted infection rates.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
NAEA has compiled a list of studies that show the effectiveness of abstinence education.
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