Proctor: Crushing Abstinence

by Family Leader Founder, Maurine Proctor

In this time of election squabbling and rancor, it is clear that to find any issue that 90% of Americans agree upon is not only remarkable; it is almost unheard of. Yet, according to a recent Zogby International poll, 9 out of 10 parents agree that being sexually abstinent is best for their children’s health and future and 8 in 10 “strongly agree.”

It seems, then, that seeking to defund abstinence education would be a hard sell to the American public-and it is-if the facts are laid out fairly. Thus advocates of yanking abstinence education turn to campaigns of deception to further their cause.

They claim for example, that the alternative, comprehensive sex education, is really just an abstinence plus program, that it teaches kids abstinence, plus additionally the importance of condom use for the sexually active. They give it a friendly name which entirely disguises the content and intent.

Here’s the reality. The Heritage Foundation did a study of comprehensive sex education vs. authentic abstinence programs and found that on average, abstinence curricula devote 53.7% of their page content to abstinence-related material and another 17.4% to the subjects of healthy relationships and the benefits of marriage. In contrast comprehensive sex-education devotes only 4.7% of their page content to the topic of abstinence and zero percent to healthy relationship and marriage.

The Heritage Study noted, “With few exceptions, the limited abstinence messages in comprehensive sex-ed are perfunctory, simplistic, unconvincing, and equivocal.”

Beyond that, comprehensive sex-ed courses give no clear encouragement for teens to delay sex-in fact, quite the opposite. The message is that it is OK for teens to have sex as long as they use contraceptives. Some comprehensive sex-ed programs are downright explicit. For example, Focus on Kids prompts teachers to ask students to explore ways they can be close to another person without having sex-and the list includes body massage, bathing together, fantasizing-and much worse which I won’t list here to spare offending the reader. We’ll leave that for your children at school.

Stacked Deck on Abstinence

The federal government spends twice the amount of money promoting “safe-sex” as it does promoting abstinence, but Rep. Henry Waxman, one of the diehard opponents of abstinence, still thinks that is too much.Last week in Congress, Rep. Waxman, held a committee hearing on abstinence education, and the deck was stacked from the beginning with eight advocates seeking to crush abstinence education against one.

Stan Weed, director of the Institute for Research and Evaluation, was the lone professional voice for abstinence education and he was speaking from a depth of experience. He has evaluated 100 abstinence programs, collected data from 500,000 adolescents and personally interviewed 2,000 of them. He was the only person on the panel who had on the ground experience evaluating abstinence programs and the statistics are encouraging.

In a recent study assessing the effectiveness of abstinence education in reducing the sexual activity of students in Virginia middle schools, Dr.Weed said, “The evaluation shows that abstinence education programs cut the rate of sexual activity among students roughly in half.”

Earlier that week the Heritage Foundation had announced the results of a study they had just completed where they had looked at 21 studies of abstinence education. Overall, 16 of the 21 studies reported statistically significant positive results, such as delayed sexual initiation and reduced levels of early sexual activity, among youths who have received abstinence education.

What Dr. Weed told the committee, is that, critics of abstinence really fall into two camps: One camp would abandon abstinence education as a strategy and policy because they think it can’t work. Their primary concern is effectiveness. Dr. Weed has the evidence to quiet that concern.

But the second group of critics really use the effectiveness argument to hide something else. They oppose abstinence education because it goes against their core value system. “They believe that our society ought to be more free and open about sex, overcome our inhibitions and simply enjoy the pleasures of physical intimacy regardless of age or marital status.”

We might use other terms besides “open” and “free.” These are the people who would promote immorality and promiscuity among our children, and they like to use very grand terms to push it.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said it this way, “Significant ethical and human rights concerns arise when abstinence is presented to adolescents as the sole choice.” Now teaching abstinence is supposed to be a human rights concern!

Don’t Miss This

In a telling moment at the hearing, Rep. Virginia Foxx asked the panelists if they would support optional federal funding for abstinence education if these programs were shown to be as beneficial as or more beneficial than comprehensive sex education, and 5 of the 7 panelists answered, “no.” Ah, ha. The masks were down for a moment. They were there in the guise of concern about the effectiveness of abstinence, but in reality they are ideologues who think our teenagers should be free to have sex. Watch this revealing moment by clicking here.

We’ll keep you posted on this battle in Congress and let you know when your voice can make a difference.

Center for Moral Liberalism contributing editor, Maurine Proctor, is the president and founder of Family Leader, and co-founder and publisher of Meridian Magazine