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SEX EDUCATION:
ABSTINENCE-ONLY PROGRAMS TEACH YOUNG TO MAKE WISE CHOICES
Babette Francis, March 6, 2010
Sex education programs that
encourage children to remain celibate can persuade a significant number
to delay sexual activity, according to a landmark study funded by a federal
grant from the US government.
Only a third of the 6th and 7th grade American students who participated
in an abstinence-only program started having sex in the next two years,
the study found, while nearly half the students who attended other classes
became sexually active.
The results provided the first evidence that abstinence-based programs
could work, just as the Obama Administration cut about US$170 million
from these programs. Abstinence-education had flourished during the Bush
years.
“I think we’ve written off abstinence-only education without
looking closely at the nature of the evidence,” said John Jemmott,
a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who led the study. “Our
study shows this could be one approach that could be used.”
The study, involving black middle-school students, appears in the February
2010 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, a publication of the
American Medical Association. It found the students in the abstinence
program showed lower levels of sexual activity even two years later.
The National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) told LifeNews.com
that the study shows positive outcomes for high-risk, African-American,
middle school students. The NAEA’s Valerie Huber reported: “The
study shows that a high-risk population of 6th and 7th graders receiving
abstinence-centred education reduced sexual initiation, reduced the number
of sexual partners (a crucial determinant in acquiring an STD), and further
showed that abstinence instruction did not deter the use of condoms (a
common charge brought by anti-abstinence critics).
“The need to provide American parents with choices regarding the
type of sex education their children are offered not only respects local
control but underscores the fact that abstinence-centred education is
an important response to the complex issue of teen sex. “Federal
funding guidelines require all abstinence-centred education to be theory-based,
medically accurate, and focused exclusively on health — the very
tenets that describe the studied abstinence program. “The Obama Administration
completely eliminated abstinence education from the 2010 budget, a rash
and imprudent decision that jeopardises the sexual health of America’s
youth. The positive outcomes of this study provide President Obama important
data for his 2011 budget recommendation to Congress. We urge a crucial
course adjustment in funding so that abstinence-centred education can
continue to work to reach teens.”
Conservative writer, Robert Rector, commented on the new study in the
conservative magazine National Review. He wrote: “Employing state-of-the-art
evaluation techniques, the study used random assignment to place students
into four groups: a group that received instruction solely in abstinence;
a safe-sex group instructed in contraceptive use; a comprehensive, or
mixed message, group taught both abstinence and contraceptive use; and
a control group that received health education unrelated to sex.
“Students in the abstinence program were one third less likely to
initiate sexual activity when compared to students in the other three
groups. By contrast, safe sex and comprehensive sex-ed classes had no
effect on student behaviour; students in these classes did not reduce
sexual activity nor increase contraceptive use when compared to the control
group.”
The study was conducted by Drs John and Loretta Jemmott of the University
of Pennsylvania. “Prior to the current study, there had been 15 scientific
evaluations of abstinence education, 11 of which had shown that abstinence
programs were effective in reducing sexual activity,” Rector noted.
“However, the new Jemmott study is the first evaluation showing positive
results which employed full random assignment.
As a result, it cannot be dismissed on methodological grounds.”
Meanwhile, Australia’s Labor Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard
says that federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s advice to his daughters
to delay sex before marriage has “confirmed the worst fears of Australian
women about him”. Worst fears? She has even asserted that Australian
women fear Tony Abbott’s advice on abstinence more than they fear
his views on global warming.
Cervical cancer
However, confirmation for Tony (“Lock Up Your Daughters”) Abbott’s
old-fashioned values comes from a recent study which found that 56 per
cent of young adults in a new sexual relationship were infected with the
sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV), a virus which condoms
cannot protect against and which is the leading cause of cervical cancer.
Of those infected with HPV, nearly half (44 per cent) were infected with
an HPV type that causes cancer.
The study, led by Professor Eduardo Franco, director of McGill University’s
Cancer Epidemiology Unit, in collaboration with a team of colleagues from
McGill and Université de Montréal/Centre Hospitalier de
l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), was published in the
January 2010 issues of Epidemiology and Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Babette Francis is national
co-ordinator of Endeavour Forum Inc., an NGO having special consultative
status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN (ECOSOC).
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