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"If ONLY This Abstinence Poll Were Honest: Debunking NAEA"
Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check on May 18, 2007 - 8:45am
Please cut and paste the following url (it's a long one!) to your browser to see what one respected expert writes about the recent poll conducted by the pro-abstinence group 'National Abstinence Education Association'

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/05/17/

if-only-this-absitnence-poll-were-honest-debunking-naea

CQ TODAY – HEALTH
May 15, 2007 – 9:18 p.m.
End of the Line Is Near for Federal Funding of Abstinence-Only Sex Education
By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff
Democrats plan to let a federal abstinence-education program die quietly next month, demonstrating that pursuit of their legislative agenda can sometimes be passive.

The authorization for Title V abstinence-education grants expires at the end of June, and those on both sides of the sex-education debate agree that the $50 million-a-year mandatory-spending program — which draws an additional $37.5 million match from the states — stands little chance of winning an extension from a Democratic-controlled Congress.

Democrats generally favor a broader approach to sex education, but the issue is a tricky one politically. So Democrats are not calling attention to the impending demise of the abstinence-only approach, which was established under the 1996 welfare overhaul (PL 104-193) and is now operating under a six-month extension (PL 109-432) — or to the possibility that a $110 million discretionary-spending abstinence program funded through the Department of Health and Human Services may be zeroed out for fiscal 2008.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman John D. Dingell, D-Mich., does not plan to extend the grant program, according to his spokeswoman, Jodi Seth.

“The Speaker will look to Chairman Dingell for leadership on this issue,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Democrats point to a study sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services and released last month as evidence that an abstinence-only approach is ineffective. The study concluded that students given abstinence education were no more likely to abstain from sex, that those who had sex did so with a similar number of partners as those who did not receive abstinence education and that those students first had sex at the same mean age.

But proponents of abstinence education say it is more popular among parents than other types of sex education. They point to a recent Zogby poll commissioned by a pro-abstinence organization. Seventy-eight percent of parents responding said sex-education classes should place greater emphasis on abstinence than on contraception.

Conservative House Republicans favor extending the abstinence-only grants.
“Anything this Congress does that promotes promiscuity on the part of our young people is a step in the wrong direction,” said Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga.

But advocates of abstinence-only education acknowledge that the programs’ death by congressional inaction is likely.
“I expect an effort by Democrats to kill off both federal abstinence programs,” said Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “It would effectively kill abstinence education.”

“It’s disappointing,” said Skip Brown, spokesman for Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., a leading proponent of abstinence education. “By killing this, Democrats are going against the wishes of most parents.”

Broader Approach
Under the Title V program, states receive formula-based grants to provide abstinence-only education. They must teach that abstinence is the expected standard for unmarried schoolchildren; that monogamous marriages are “the expected standard of human sexual activity”; that abstinence is the only sure way to avoid extramarital pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and related health problems; and that extramarital sex and child-bearing are harmful to parents, children and society.

Democrats including Pelosi contend that abstinence should be taught as part of a broader sex-education curriculum.
“The Speaker supports funding for both abstinence and comprehensive sexuality education,” Hammill said. “We must get at the root of the problem by reducing unintended pregnancies through sex education and access to contraception.”

California Democrat Henry A. Waxman, a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who battled against abstinence-only education when Democrats were in the minority, said he would oppose any effort to extend the federal grant program. He called it a “huge waste of money” and said it “gives a lot of kids misinformation” on health issues.

Rector warned that it would be a political mistake for Democrats to abolish abstinence-only programs: “If the Democrats kill them, that will be something in the long-term that very much comes back to haunt them.”

Rep. Brad Ellsworth, a freshman Democrat from socially conservative southwestern Indiana , said he has not had a chance to review the federal grant program but that abstinence education is popular in his district. “It is the preferred method,” he said.

In March, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., introduced legislation (HR 1653) that would give states annual grants to promote “family life education” including instruction in the use of abstinence and contraception as means of combating teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Lee’s bill has 62 cosponsors, including one Republican, Christopher Shays of Connecticut .

Source: CQ Today
Round-the-clock coverage of news from Capitol Hill.
© 2007 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Rebecca Wind
mediaworks@guttmacher.org

Eighty-six percent of the recent decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of improved contraceptive use, while a small proportion of the decline (14%) can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex, according to “Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use” by John Santelli et al., published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health. This study raises serious questions about the value of the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that prohibit information about the benefits of condoms and contraception.

Between 1995 and 2002, U.S. teen pregnancy rates declined by almost one-quarter (24%). The new study, from Columbia University and Guttmacher Institute investigators, examines data from the federal National Survey of Family Growth to determine the relative contributions of abstinence and contraceptive use to this decline. According to the analysis, most of the decline (86%) was due to more sexually active teens using contraceptives, using more effective methods (e.g., condoms and birth control pills) and using multiple methods (e.g., the pill together with condoms) in 2002 than in 1995. When broken down by age, delays in sexual activity played a greater role for younger teens aged 15–17 (23% of the decline). Among 18–19-year-olds, the decline in the risk of teen pregnancy was entirely attributable to improved contraceptive use.

“The United States seems to be following the recent patterns in other developed countries where increased availability and use of modern contraceptives and condoms have led to remarkable declines in teen pregnancy,” said lead author John Santelli. “If most of the progress in reducing teen pregnancy rates is due to improved contraceptive use, national policy needs to catch up with those realities.”

These study findings cast doubt upon current U.S. government policies that promote abstinence-only-until-marriage as the primary pregnancy prevention message for teens. The authors recommend that public policies and programs should vigorously promote the provision of medically accurate information on condoms and contraception, and support increased availability and accessibility of contraceptive services and supplies for teens, since these activities have the greatest impact on teen pregnancy declines.

http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2006/12/01/index.html

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Editorial Atlanta Journal Constitution

OUR OPINION
Dems, use your power to push birth control

By Cynthia Tucker
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/26/06

Perhaps President Bush believes the ultraconservative political operatives who claim the GOP lost its majority because the party didn't move far enough to the right. Or perhaps the president just has no use for moderate politics or bipartisan compromise.

Whatever the reason, Bush continued his dogged resistance to reality —- and the conventions of the 21st century —- several days ago when his administration gave the job of overseeing federally funded family planning programs to Dr. Eric Keroack. The new head of the Office of Population Affairs not only opposes abortions but also birth control! Keroack was the longtime medical director of the Massachusetts-based pregnancy counseling center "A Woman's Concern," which holds that dispensing contraceptives is "demeaning to women."

While 14 Democratic senators sent a letter protesting the appointment, it's unlikely Keroack will be canned. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

Nevertheless, the antediluvian forces that want to keep women barefoot and pregnant are losing the battle. The stars are finally aligned for a common-sense consensus to encourage the use of contraceptives.

With a victory for moderation in the midterm elections, and with laissez-faire conservatives out West walking (running, actually) away from busybody fundamentalists in the Deep South, Congress can plot a course on which Western Europe set out a long time ago —- discouraging abortions by encouraging birth control. A federally supported campaign to encourage contraceptive use would do more to reduce the abortion rate than two decades of conservative initiatives to overturn Roe v. Wade —- all the inflammatory political campaigns, rants against federal judges and attacks on abortion clinics combined.

While the United States has about 53 births per 1,000 teenagers, a rate worse than India's and Rwanda's, Great Britain has about 20 babies per 1,000 adolescents. Germany and Norway have around 11; Finland, eight; Sweden and Denmark, seven; the Netherlands, five. The difference? Western Europe has little of the hypermoralism that subverts rationale discourse about sex, so that contraceptives are advertised, displayed, dispensed and widely used.

In this country, by contrast, President Bush has given appointments to ultraconservatives who tried to block over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive known as the "morning after" pill; railed against a vaccine that would protect against the sexually transmitted virus, HPV, which is the leading cause of cervical cancer; and funded abstinence-only programs that do not prevent teen pregnancies.

The newly empowered Democratic majority —- especially those in its ranks who oppose abortion —- should quickly join forces with Republican moderates to put an end to those benighted policies. They can start by supporting the work of the Government Accountability Office, which has found that federally funded abstinence-only programs spread disinformation to adolescents. Among other things, some programs have taught teens that condoms are too "porous" to stop transmission of HIV.

Not so. Research has shown repeatedly that proper use of condoms is quite effective in stopping the spread of the virus that causes AIDS. The nonpartisan GAO has pointed out that the federal Department of Health and Human Services has violated federal law, which requires taxpayer funds be spent only on programs dispensing information that is "medically correct."

The larger problem with abstinence-only programs, of course, is that they don't prevent teens from having sex. While many other recipients of federal grants are required to show that their programs are effective, HHS exempted abstinence-only programs from that requirement. The result is that teens who choose to have sex have little information about preventing pregnancy or disease.

Should adolescents be taught to abstain from sex? Absolutely, just as they should be taught to abstain from alcoholic beverages. But smart parents don't want to push their children into a dangerous corner, ashamed to admit irresponsible behavior but lacking support for ameliorating the damage. That's why so many parents, having told their teenagers not to drink, add the lifesaving admonition: If you do drink, don't drive. Call home, and we'll pick you up. Similarly, savvy parents and teachers would urge teens not to have sex —- but if you do, use a condom.

It's high time for that sort of common sense to find its way back into public policy.

> Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2006/11/26/edtuck1126.html

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Editorial: New York Times

Published: November 24, 2006

It sounds like a late-night parody of President Bush’s bad habit of filling key posts with extreme ideologues and incompetents. To head family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Bush has tapped Eric Keroack, a doctor affiliated with a group vehemently opposed to birth control and someone nationally known for his wacky theory about reproductive health.

Before his appointment, Dr. Keroack served as the medical director of A Woman’s Concern, a network of pregnancy counseling clinics across Massachusetts whose method of trying to dissuade women from having an abortion includes spreading the scary and medically inaccurate myth that having an abortion steeply increases the risk of breast cancer. The group also has a policy against dispensing contraception even to married women. It has stated on its Web site that the distribution of contraceptive drugs or devices is “demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness.” Dr. Keroack now claims that he disagrees with these approaches, a repositioning that seems very belated.

When speaking at abstinence conferences across the country, and in his writings, Dr. Keroack has promoted the novel argument that sex with multiple partners alters brain chemistry in a way that makes it harder for women to form bonding relationships. One of the researchers cited by Dr. Keroack has called the claim “complete pseudoscience” unsupported by her findings.

Armed with these credentials, Dr. Keroack has been drafted to lead the federal office that finances birth control, pregnancy tests, breast cancer screening and other critical health care services for five million poor people annually, and to advise Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt on family planning issues. Americans who were expecting a more moderate administration in the wake of this month’s elections may find all this shocking. But to the unchastened Bush White House, apparent opposition to contraceptives, abortion and science was the opposite of disqualifying. It was a winning trifecta.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/opinion/24fri3.html

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Editorial: Atlanta Journal Constitution

Abstinence-only? Obstinate only

Published on: 11/21/06

The federal government has invested a billion dollars in the last 10 years on sex education programs in which the guiding principle is to mention sex as little as possible and then only in whispered consternation.

Unfortunately, there's little or no evidence that investment has paid off, and in some ways it may have made things even worse.

"Most of the efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of abstinence-until-marriage education programs ... have not met certain minimum criteria that experts have concluded are necessary in order for assessments of program effectiveness to be scientifically valid," the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office concluded last week.

Under the Bush administration, the federal Department of Health and Human Services has bowed to those in the religious right who believe that the only information teens and young adults should hear is that premarital sex is wrong, and that teaching about contraceptives dilutes the "no sex" message.

It isn't working. Nearly half of U.S. high school students surveyed said they had sexual intercourse last year, with 14.3 percent saying they had sex with four or more partners. Yet the federal government maintains that teens are better off uninformed about how contraceptives can prevent pregnancy and disease.

HHS regulations go so far as to forbid abstinence-until-marriage programs from discussing the effectiveness of condoms, a prohibition that the GAO recently stated violates federal law. In a letter to the HHS, the GAO said federal law requires that all federally funded education programs that deal with sexually transmitted diseases must provide medically accurate information about the effectiveness of condoms. HHS is disputing that GAO opinion.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues to increase its investment in abstinence-only education. In 2001, the federal government spent $73 million on abstinence-until-marriage programs; last year it spent $158 million.

In fact, the federal government has now advised states that the abstinence message — and spending — should spread beyond teens to adults up to 29 years of age.

While the abstinence-only industry is burgeoning, so is the rate of sexually transmitted diseases among teens and young people. Almost half of the 19 million new infections each year occur among 15- to 24-year-olds.

That's an outrage. The incoming Congress ought to demand that HHS base its public health policy on reputable research rather than political pandering.

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)

http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2006/11/21/1121edabstain.html

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