By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
In spite of their own research showing that 70 percent of parents and 60 percent of teens believe sexual relations belong inside marriage, Congress is set to cancel funding for 176 abstinence programs effective September 30.
Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association said that because the Administration has cancelled all grants going to abstinence-centered programs in their FY2010 budget, more than two million teens will return to school this year without the skill-building lessons they have come to expect in their abstinence education classes.
“We are greatly concerned that the sex education policy being implemented by this administration does not reflect the values of what most parents and teens clearly want,“ Huber said.
“Teen-sex advocacy groups have pushed for an end to abstinence education funding, despite the fact that a recent HHS study showed most teens and their parents support the core message of the program,” she explained.
Huber is referring to the government’s own study which found that parents and teens overwhelmingly agree with the central message of abstinence – that sexual relations belong inside marriage. The study, called the National Survey of Adolescents and Their Parents, found that 70 percent of parents agreed that it is “against [their] values for [their] adolescents to have sexual intercourse before marriage” and that “having sexual intercourse is something only married people should do.” Sixty percent of adolescents gave similar responses.
At first, the Department of Health and Human Services refused to publish the full results of the study and did so last week but only after significant pressure from abstinence groups and social scientists. The government’s stonewalling has called into question whether recent sex education policy decisions truly reflect cultural norms or clear evidence-based trends.
Larry McAdoo, executive director of STARS, an abstinence program in Mississippi that will lose funding, said: “Our state has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. I do not understand why our services to needy teens would be cut short. Mississippi’s teens need more resources, not less. Our abstinence program equips youth with the skills necessary to make healthy choices. Soon, however, Mississippi’s youth will be left without any resources to counter the sexual messages with which they are continually bombarded.”
Huber agreed, saying,”It is important that the representative government reflects the desires of its constituents. This study’s findings call for a reinstatement of funding for abstinence education within the next fiscal budget.”
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