By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
After intense criticism, the U.S. Department of Health of Human Services (HHS) has decided to release the full results of a government study that found an overwhelming number of parents and teens favored abstinence before marriage, a finding that does not support the Obama Administration’s desire to cut all abstinence education funding in favor of “safe sex” programs.
LifeSiteNews.com is reporting that HHS finally sent them a full copy of the 196-page report entitled, “National Survey of Adolescents and Their Parents: Attitudes and Opinions About Sex and Abstinence.” This was only after the HHS received widespread criticism for refusing to release anything but the executive summary of the study, which denied behavioral scientists the vital data they need to improve programs aimed at helping teens practice abstinence.
In the study, 70 percent of parents said sex before marriage was against their values, with 60 percent of teens between the ages of 12 and 18 agreeing. The majority of parents and teens also said they believed sexual intercourse should be confined to marriage.
The study also found that the attitudes of parents and peers were key in the choices teens made between engaging in, or abstaining from, sex outside marriage.
Researchers were immediately interested in analyzing the data behind these findings, but the HHS refused to release the full report.
This prompted scientists such as Lisa Rue, Ph.D., to publicly expose the government’s stonewalling tactics. Rue published an op-ed in her local paper about how the HHS refused to release the report, even after she resorted to filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
“We have to know cultural norms and values before we ever do any kind of research, or develop initiatives,” Rue said. “If you ignore that, you’re ignoring a premise, a key premise in evaluation science and research.”
Rue, along with many other scientists and educators, began to suspect that because the study’s results undermine the Obama administration’s priorities on sex education, politics were definitely at play.
Rue asks: “At this point in time, we must ask ourselves: Is this valuable process being suppressed by those who wish to repress American values in an effort to exert control over sex education offered in the United States?”
After a week of this kind of negative publicity, the HHS finally released the full report.
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