Misleading about Abstinence - Editorial

(Another old Belgrade News editorial from November 20, 2007)


Every once in a while we get another Associated Press article on how abstinence education is not working.

The sex ed lobby is persistent in its agenda, and in its desire to control the message. It seems that every time Congress reviews abstinence education programs the media quickly put out a story claiming abstinence education doesn’t work.

The latest example is a “new” study promulgated by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which appeared in a recent Bozeman Daily Chronicle entitled “Report: Abstinence programs don’t work.”

This kind of reporting is why we should never trust what we read in the newspaper.

The article begins, “Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.”

“Non partisan.” This is our first tip that things are going to go from bad to worse. The article identifies the author of the study, Douglas Kirby, as a researcher for ETR Associates. ETR develops and markets sex education curricula, which Kirby reviewed for the study. At least the AP saw fit to include this in its article.

But, the article fails to mention that the “non partisan” National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has as one of its “trustee emeriti” ETR’s Douglas Kirby! This kind of incestuous relationship is crucial to understanding the motivation for this study, and the broader issue as well, but there is no mention of this relationship in the article.

So what else is wrong with the AP article?

Well, there is no rebuttal from critics of the study, no quotes from abstinence advocates. The Abstinence Clearinghouse, for example, said this: “This study says nothing new that opponents to abstinence education haven’t already said. This study indicates clearly that it focused primarily on two previous mathematical studies among a few others that evaluated abstinence. They are providing no new information but rather the same old distorted information based on a poorly-designed evaluation with weak results.”

Or how about this: The AP article says that “tens of millions of dollars” in federal grants is paid for abstinence-only education, but fails to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars are paid out by the government for “traditional” sex ed programs.

Leftists, driven by ‘60s free love philosophy, are attempting to increase their stranglehold on public school sex ed programs so that their values will be inculcated into our youth, even if such values confilict with parents’. But what has been the result?

Well. during the 1980s for example, teen pregnancy and birth rates, abortion and STD rates doubled over the course of the decade.

Never letting failure stand in the way of government funding and the subsequent indoctrination of children, the anti-abstinence crowd trots out its self-serving “studies” in order to ensure that only its message is heard.

Interestingly, abstinence-only education HAS worked when the message made past these hostile gatekeepers. But I doubt you’ll ever see an AP article saying that.