I Want to Save a Child's Sight!

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Abstinence-Only=NOT WORKING

Kristof: "You see, for all the carnage in President Bush's budget, one program is being showered with additional cash - almost three times as much as it got in 2001. It's "abstinence only" sex education, and the best research suggests that it will cost far more lives than the Clinton administration's much more notorious sex scandal."
"Other developed countries focus much more on contraception. The upshot is that while teenagers in the U.S. have about as much sexual activity as teenagers in Canada or Europe, Americans girls are four times as likely as German girls to become pregnant, almost five times as likely as French girls to have a baby, and more than seven times as likely as Dutch girls to have an abortion. Young Americans are five times as likely to have H.I.V. as young Germans, and teenagers' gonorrhea rate is 70 times higher in the U.S. than in the Netherlands or France." [NYT] [WP]

Ok, let's think about this...Congressman Waxman (D-CA) conducted studies of abstinence-only programs, and found that 11 of 13 curricula contains errors and distortions. I agree with Kristof, abstinence is a big part of it. But, try to tell that to a 17-year old boy. We have to be teaching protection and the PROPER way to use protection.
[IsolatedIncident] [Waxman] [PlannedParenthood]
Kos: "Abortions are up during Bush's term. Divorces are up during Bush's term. And, thanks to abstinence-only education, it looks like teen sex is also up during Bush's term." [Kos]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ben,
While reading this I was getting so heated! I can remember sex ed in high school and it being such a joke. People are going to have sex if they want to and if they do not have the education on how to protect themselves they are going to regret it.
I am actually doing a presentation on this topic right now for my methods class next week and found some interesting information. There is a website that you might find interesting too. Teenpregnancy.org