Abstinence programs get nod from study
WASHINGTON (CNS) – A new study about the effectiveness of abstinence education is good news for those who teach the topic, but it also could be too little, too late.
Abstinence educators welcomed the study published in the February issue of “Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine,” a monthly journal. The study showed that young teens who were given an abstinence-only message were significantly more likely to delay having sex than those who received a more comprehensive sex education.
The research has been getting attention because it is said to be the first rigorously conducted study demonstrating the effectiveness of an abstinence-only program. It was released just a week after the Guttmacher Institute published a study showing that America’s teen pregnancy rate rose 3 percent in 2006 after a 10-year decline.
How the Guttmacher data is interpreted seems to depend on one’s position. Some blame the uptick in the number of teen pregnancies on the use of abstinence-only programs, but advocates of abstinence education say there are a variety of social and cultural factors in play.
Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, called it a “simplistic charge” to “naively lay wholesale blame on abstinence education as the cause for higher teen birth rates.”
A week later, when the abstinence study was released, Huber seemed more upbeat, saying the study “verifies what we’ve known intuitively all along, which is that abstinence-only education is a very important strategy to help young people delay having sex.”
The abstinence study used random trials involving a group of 662 African-American sixth- and seventh-graders. Only about a third of the group who completed an abstinence-education program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found. Nearly half of the students who attended other classes, including ones that combined information about abstinence and contraception, became sexually active.
John Jemmott, the lead author of the abstinence study and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, said he doesn’t want either side of the issue to read too much into the research.
“This is one study,” he said, adding that he hopes it will spur other researchers to design similar studies with different populations in order to have “a body of evidence.”
Judith Vogtli, director of ProjecTruth, an abstinence-education program run under the auspices of Catholic Charities of Buffalo, N.Y., is all for more studies, saying she liked the fact that this study directly compared the effectiveness of different sex education approaches.
“We’re not afraid” of more research, she told Catholic News Service Feb. 4, noting that those in the field know anecdotally that their programs work and that they welcome more proof.
She also hopes studies such as this one will not just provide a boost for the abstinence-only movement but possibly enable them to regain federal funding such programs receive that is set to end this September under the Obama administration’s 2010 budget.
The administration announced last year that it was cutting more than $170 million in annual federal funding for abstinence programs and instead was launching a $144 million pregnancy prevention initiative that would only fund only programs that have been shown scientifically to work. There is currently a measure in the U.S. Senate to restore about $50 million to abstinence education, but its passage is uncertain.
According to the National Abstinence Education Association, more than 130 programs around the country – serving roughly 1.5 million youths – could be affected by the cut in federal funding.
Vogtli, whose program has been offered at Catholic and public schools since 2001, said it has “been in (financial) jeopardy” since it started and will not be able to continue without federal funds.
She is not about to give up though, urging those who visit the program’s Web site – www.ccwny.org/projectruth – to write to congressional leaders and push them to reinstate funding for abstinence education.
“There needs to be public outrage about this – as there was with health care,” she said, noting that the youths who could benefit from the programs should not be “political pawns.”
Government funding for abstinence education began in 1982 and expanded in 1996 as part of welfare reform. In recent years funds have come from the Adolescent Family Life Act, Title V of the Social Security Act and Community-Based Abstinence Education Program.
Vogtli noted that when it comes to sex education, abstinence programs are “preferred in many communities,” and said parents should be given a choice in what is offered.
Without federal funding, many of these programs will simply shut down, she said, although some have elaborate fundraising plans or hopes to get grants.
“The field will continue,” she said, noting that many groups existed before there was federal funding. Some church groups have also said they will try to fill in the gap if abstinence-education programs decrease.
Although Vogtli put up an optimistic front, she couldn’t hide her frustration.
“It’s hard to understand how this money can be taken from our kids,” she said.
By Carol Zimmermann
From February 12, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
