In a finding that will utterly fail to shock anyone who has ever been a normal teenager,
Sex education programs that encourage teenagers to delay sexual activity but also teach them how to reduce their chances of getting pregnant or a sexually transmitted disease cut risky sexual behavior, increase condom use and lower the chances of getting the AIDS virus and other infections.
Of course, the findings were condemned by advocates of abstinence programs, which is not surprising, because it has long been the suspicion that the advocates of abstinence-only sexual education are more concerned with trying to scare teens into not having sex rather than to actually reduce their level of risky sexual behavior. Some abstinence-only advocates may genuinely believe that not encouraging/teaching those teens who have sex to do it safely will decrease risky sexual behavior, but the suspicion is that many of them are pushing the abstinence-only education program because it conforms to their moral beliefs that teens having sex is bad.
Of course, it will come to no surprise to just about anyone who has ever been a teenager that being told not to do something by a teacher is not necessarily going to be very successful in achieving its aims, especially when that means ignoring hormones are that are raging throughout the body. And while there may be some evidence that abstinence-only education delays sexual intercourse (which is presumably good because older teens are less likely to engage in riskier sexual behavior?) there is no good evidence, according to this review (by the Center for Disease Control’s Task Force on Community Preventive Services), that abstinence-only education reduces teenagers’ risky sexual behaviors. Comprehensive sex education that discourages sex while educating students about how to have safe sex both delays sex and increases safe sex practices.
Of course, if my suspicion that abstinence-only advocates are driven by religious and/or moral agendas rather than by real concerns about increasing the sexual health of teens is true, then the abstinence-only proponents likely will not care what evidence-based evaluations reveal and will continue advocating it no matter how thoroughly it is debunked.
Source:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/07/MNFV1AG9UI.DTL&type=education
