Teen Abstinence Pledges Have No Effect

The first sentence of the story sums it up pretty neatly. "Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study out today."

Janet Rosenbaum, who conducted the study for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health concluded, "Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior. But it does seems to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking." This striking difference is a 10-point reduction in taking precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. You can see the Washington Post story on it here.

The results will provide fodder for the debate about whether to continue the Bush Administration's concentration on "abstinence only" education programs, which currently enjoy $176 million in federal support. This is a cornerstone issue to the current occupant's fundamentalist base of supporters. They believe that talking about sex makes teenagers more likely to engage in it, as does talking about ways to have sex and not get pregnant or contract STDs. As usual, studies like these do not change their views, which tend to be faith-based and therefore impervious to fact and logic.

If the same number of teens will have sex whether they are taught a comprehensive or an abstinence-only curriculum, then withholding information that would reduce unwanted pregnancies and save lives seems particularly shortsighted and cruel. More studies should be done to determine whether the Johns Hopkins results can be confirmed. If so, then abstinence only programs should be left to the organizations that want to promote them-without public support.

Good comprehensive curricula clearly point out the common emotional and psychological repercussions of teen sex, as well as the risks of pregnancy and venereal diseases and their effects. Armed with this, if the young people still want to have sex they deserve to know the choices of safeguards they can employ. To think and teach otherwise is naive in the extreme--and dangerous.