Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: The Giant Elephant in the Room (03.28.09)

By: Maryjo M. Oster

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or more, I have some bad news for you: the economy’s not doing so well at the moment. One of our new president’s major campaign promises was to go through the budget “line by line” and spend money more efficiently and cut spending for programs that do not work. The first time I heard then Senator Barack Obama make this statement, a chill of excitement ran down my spine and I thought, “Finally! The end of federal abstinence-only-until-marriage grant programs!” Here again, just in case you’ve been out of the loop for a while, I’ve got something else to share with you: abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are completely ineffective. The government commissioned study on these programs concluded that they had no effect on any measure of adolescent sexual behavior. However, even though this evaluation came out two years ago, the three major streams of federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funding (the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) Section 510 of Title V of the Social Security Act, and Special Projects of Regional and National Significance – Community Based Abstinence Education (SPRANS-CBAE) program) continue to be reauthorized by Congress and in the case of the latter two streams, see repeated increases in funding.

As something of an “insider” in the world of teen pregnancy prevention and sex education, I hear a lot of talk about attempts to establish similar funding streams for medically-accurate, evidence based comprehensive sex education, but I really wonder sometimes if anyone watching the news! THERE ISN’T ANY MONEY LEFT! Further, I really do not think that the answer here is to try to put good money after bad. If we are really serious about balancing the budget and getting our economy back on track, I really do not envision a separate federal comprehensive sex education grant program in our near future. I do, however, think it makes complete and total sense that Congress acts in line with President Obama’s desire to eliminate funding for programs that do not work and NOT reauthorize the federal abstinence-only-until-marriage programs again in their current state.

However, I think there is a better solution than simply eliminating the programs altogether. It is far more difficult to create new government programs from scratch than it is to amend existing ones. Because the issue here is how to spend our money more effectively and not let any of it go to waste, the best solution is to modify the abstinence-only-until-marriage funding streams to support comprehensive, medically-accurate, science-based sex education programs. By this point, it is quite apparent that the abstinence-only programs are clear wastes of taxpayer dollars, and we know that effective programming that can reduce the incidence of teen pregnancy and STI and HIV acquisition will save us money in the long term. A win-win situation!

America will not be broke forever. In time, the economic crisis will be resolved. In the meantime, though, I see a glaringly obvious elephant in the room that for some reason people are not acknowledging. Open your eyes Congress! Abstinence-only-until-marriage education is ineffective and the federal programs that support them are a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. It is time for us to look that elephant in the eye, tell it “No!” Fund programs that have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing teen pregnancy and STI and HIV acquisition and help put us on the road to economic recovery.