Barbara Lee Responds to Govt. Report that Abstinence-Only Sex Education Doesn’t Work
(Washington, DC) – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), a leading Congressional advocate for comprehensive sex education, responded to a Congressionally required report, released quietly by the Bush administration last week, that found that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are not effective at impacting teen behavior.
“This report confirms what we have been saying all along: when it comes to protecting the health of our young people, we should be relying on science, not ideology,” said Lee. “The administration’s attempt to hide this report by releasing it on a Friday night is totally consistent with their approach to this issue: they just don’t want people to know the facts.”
Late last Friday afternoon, the Department of Health and Human Services released the study, an evaluation of four Title V, Section 510 abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, on its website without any press release or prior notice. The 10-year, government funded study found that “Youth in the program group were no more likely than control group youth to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age.” Currently, programs like those studied receive $176 million annually, and have received more than $1.5 billion overall.
“We need to get REAL about sex education. We should absolutely be teaching young people about abstinence, but we shouldn’t be holding back information that can save lives and prevent unwanted pregnancies,” said Lee, whose Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act, H.R. 1653, would create a federal funding stream for comprehensive sex education. “Instead of ‘abstinence only,’ what we’re proposing is ‘abstinence-plus.’”
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