No Surprise: Abstinence Works
Education: New evidence showing that abstinence instruction works better than sex education should be no surprise. Of course the facts of life beat the tools of self-destruction.Last month, Planned Parenthood’s Guttmacher Institute reported that “for the first time since the early 1990s, overall rates of pregnancy and birth — and, to a lesser extent, rates of abortion — among teenagers and young women increased from 2005 to 2006,” the latest period for which figures are available.
The increase in the pregnancy rate was small — from 69.5 per 1,000 to 71.5 for girls aged 15-to-19 — and comes after a consistent long-term decline from 116.9 in 1990. But that didn’t stop the Planned Parenthood adjunct from shouting that the sky was falling — and placing the blame.
“After more than a decade of progress, this reversal is deeply troubling,” remarked Heather Boonstra, senior public policy associate for the Institute.
“It coincides with an increase in rigid abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which received major funding boosts under the Bush administration.”
The Obama administration has scrapped more than $170 million in annual funding for abstinence instruction.
According to Boonstra, “A strong body of research shows that these programs do not work.”
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com …
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