Abstinence education works. That's according to a study in Virginia that shows teenagers will wait to have sex if that's what they are taught. Yet just this week, Gov. Tim Kaine state refused federal funding for abstinence programs.
The Virginia Department of Health’s Abstinence Education Initiative tracked the behavior of seventh-graders in five schools. Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, said researchers found that kids who were enrolled in the Reasons of the Heart curriculum were about half as likely to initiate sexual activity as students who didn’t receive abstinence education.
“Children were in fact delaying their sexual decisions based on abstinence education," Cobb told Family News in Focus.
Valerie Huber, director of the National Abstinence Education Association, said it wasn’t just the kids who have never had sex who were influenced.
“Students who enter abstinence-education classes who are sexually active regularly discontinue that sexual activity as a result," she said. "So this is a message that resonates with every single student in classrooms across the country.”
