A Center for Disease Control report released this month reveals that in 2006 there was a dramatic rise in teen births among 15-19 year olds in the United States bringing to a grinding halt a steady 14-year decline. In fact, we are witnessing the reversal of many positive trends that began in the nineties. Along with the dramatic decline in teen birth rates, the nineties brought a steep drop in abortion and unwanted pregnancy rates. Even sexual activity among high school students declined significantly in the nineties and teens who were having sex (as on average, 50% will before graduating high school) were also using protection more. Now these trends are slowing or reversing. Sadly, these reversals seemed inevitable. After all, the 2000s have turned away from every strategy that the nineties proved was effective…. In fact, Jamie Lynn Spears and her pregnant peers are the victims of a one and half billion dollar social experiment: the national implementation of the abstinence until marriage policy. For the duration of the Bush administration, the policy of preference is to simply tell teens not to have sex before marriage. Like the Just Say No to drugs campaigns of the Reagan years, it too has been a colossal failure. Abstinence-only programs have not succeeded in convincing kids not to have sex, but have led many not to use contraception. To scare kids kids away sexual activity, abstinence-only programs focus on the dangers of sex. If contraception is ever mentioned it is to highlight (and exaggerate) its failure rates.
The degree to which the Rabid Right clings to their misguided misconceptions is truly impressive in it’s commitment to The Way Things Oughta Be. It’s an article of faith among Social Conservatives that teaching abstinence is the only effective and acceptable method for teaching children about sex and sexuality. It seems that ignorance of reality is a fundamental tenet of the Rabid Right. Never mind that there is no evidence to indicate that abstinence education is anything but a hole into which large sums of tax dollars are poured into. Good Christians wait until marriage to have sex, right? So that’s what we’ll teach our children, damnit!
What Would Jesus Do? Personally, I think he’d be slapping some of His intellectually-challenged and reality-deficient followers upside the head. Ignoring reality does not change reality. Kids are going to explore their sexuality and experiment with sex. If those of us with even a shred of intellectual honesty would take just a minute to remember our teenage years, you’ll probably remember that it was all about sex. Me? I wanted to schtupp my 10th-grade homeroom teacher in the worst way. When it came to sex for me, it was as if I was all dressed up with absolutely no place to go. Now, take that sort of rampant hormonal immaturity, set it down in today’s highly sexualized cultural landscape, and the opportunities and temptations are even more prevalent. Children today are bombarded with sexual imagery and messages from the time they get up until the time they go to bed…and the holier-than-thou crowd just expects them to ignore those influences? Get a clue….
Whether the Social Conservative Sturmtruppen want to admit it or not, it doesn’t change reality. By and large, abstinence-only programs don’t work. Sure, in a perfect world, young people would reign in their libidos and wait until marriage…or until they’re at least mature enough to take the proper precautions. We were all teenagers once, though, and we know that teenagers tend to think that they’ll live forever and that nothing bad will ever happen to them. They already know everything, and they know that sex looks like a whole lot of fun. Guess what; they’re right! Left to their own devices, kids will have sex, and until we admit and address that reality, kids will continue taking stupid risks and becoming pregnant…and much worse.
I’m certainly not going to argue that with the position that teaching abstinence is a valid choice and should be part of any sexual education curriculum. However, when schools are required to adhere to a strict abstinence-only curriculum, it’s the equivalent of playing Russian Roulette. Pull the trigger a few times, and eventually you’ll win the prize. Is that really what we want for our children?
