And what does Bush think we ought to do about birth control? how about in the instance of rape? It’s this bullshit we have to see from his administration that only reinforces the gender inequality of the US. Clinton 08 anyone?

President Bush, if kids aren’t having sex and making babies, from where will all the underprivileged kids for the army come?

As a graduate of a public school in Milwaukee, I can testify that the Safe-Sex cirriculum was extremely practical. Bush’s plan, like most of his other plans, gets people to live a life of fear. Safe Sex knowledge is especially important after being a part of a big college campus here at UW. Remember, contraception can be your friend, but knowledge is very, very sexy.

Emily, you’re right. Abstinence alone won’t teach kids about the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and STD’s. I have a better idea: HEY KIDS, YOU’RE TURNING INTO A BUNCH OF F*&#-CRAZY ANIMALS!! IF YOU HAVE SEX AND WIND UP PREGNANT OR INFECTED, TOUGH SH!T!! YOU KNEW THE RISKS, YOU TOOK YOUR CHANCES, NOW YOU’RE STUCK WITH THE CONSEQUENCES!! CRAWL INTO A HOLE AND DIE!!

When they read this and realize just how uncaring the world will be if they screw up, they should have no problem whatsoever avoiding unprotected sex. Nothing like a good ol’ passion session with the French tickler or Fleshlight to keep you outta trouble, eh?

In a poll conducted by Zogby International parents overwhelmingly support the main themes and messages of abstinence education:

79 percent of parents want teens to be taught that they should not engage in sexual activity until they are married or at least in an adult relationship leading to marriage. 91 percent of parents want teens to be taught that "the best choice is for sexual intercourse to be linked to love, intimacy, and commitment. These qualities are most likely to occur in a faithful marriage." 68 percent of parents want sex education programs to teach that "individuals who are not sexually active until they are married have the best chances of marital stability and happiness." 91 percent of parents want schools to teach that "adolescents should be expected to abstain from sexual activity during high school years."

I don’t understand this movement to silence and censor curriculum that supports a moral choice. It is obvious to anyone who has become knowledgeable about abstinence education that the author is woefully misinformed and only trumpeting the talking points of the nations largest abortion and contraction supplier, Planned Parenthood.

This is all about money and Planned Parenthood wants all of it to indoctrinate as much of our kids as possible while circumventing parental consent and involvement. Don’t buy these lies.

“Bush’s plan, like most of his other plans, gets people to live a life of fear.”

Hey moron, it’s not just Bush’s plan, it’s an idea that’s been around for a long time. If you think teaching abstinence is just a bunch of fear-mongering, then try dealing with an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease! THEN you’ll have something to fear! No one else to blame, but definitely something to fear.

Why don’t you just face the fact that we have become a morally decadent society? When it comes to indecency, we Americans are second to none! Look what goes on with young people today. If I were a young person today with any sense, I’d beg my parents to either let me attend a private school where they don’t put up with the crap that goes on in public schools or I’d be on home schooling!

It’s you liberals who brought all this down on us. You made the mess this time around, YOU clean it up! We’re tired of seeing our tax dollars go to paying for your sick perverted lifestyles, just like most of us are sick of seeing our president throw our tax dollars into this stupid war with Iraq! Is it really always someone else’s fault that so many kids throw their lives away despite every attempt to show them the way? We’re only so sympathetic for so long. We’re not going to bail you out of every bit of trouble you get yourself into! Even your own liberal predecessors before you would agree that you need to take responsibility for your actions. Show us how smart you really are!

Kids inevitably have sex due to the prevalent message that pre-marital sex is acceptable if two people are "in love". They are inevitably going to have sex because the culture sends a mixed message that abstinence is good but so is sex with contraceptives. Society has set the standard that sex is a viable alternative to abstinence, so why wouldn't kids engage in it?

Contraception isn't the answer to preventing the problems associated with pre-marital sex — it's part of the problem.

Contraceptives provide both teens and young adults with a false sense of security and enables them to take risks they normally wouldn’t.

Essentially, it helps to swell the ranks of those who engage in premarital sex. History shows that as contraceptives became increasingly available to unmarried teens, the percentage of women aged 15-19 who ever engaged in premarital sex continued to rise. The figures rose from 30.4% in 1971 to 43.4% in 1976, and rose again to 49.8 % in 1979. (Source: Hofferth)

If these would have remained constant, then contraception would have led to some reduction in pregnancy and birth. Instead these potential reductions were offset by the increase in the number of unmarried, sexually active teens combined with contraceptive failure and non-use.

Contraceptives aren't perfect, and have significant failure rates with typical use. For example, almost 15 out of 100 women who rely on condoms for birth control will get pregnant within a year. (Source: Fu).

Adolescents and young adults (especially those aged 20-24) are typically not in a position to deal with the consequences of contraceptive failure — pregnancy, disease, depression, and abortion. The high abortion rates for women aged 20-24 reflect the fact that young adults aren't in much of a better position to deal with pregnancy than their teen counterparts.

Contrary to popular belief, condoms have limited effectiveness in preventing transmission of many sexually transmitted diseases. Information from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reveals that they are have limited effectiveness against the transmission of HPV, Chlamydia, and herpes. (Source: CDC)

There isn't a healthy reason why either unmarried teens or young adults should be engaging in pre-marital sex. There are no health benefits from having it, and the consequences of doing so can be life threatening — pregnancy, oral contraceptives, and diseases can pose significant health risks to these young people. On the other hand, there is no health risks associated with abstaining from pre-marital sex.

There are psychological problems as well. As Dr. Miriam Grossman details in her book "Unprotected", young college men and women are being made miserable by their sexual choices.

A study out of the University of North Carolina reveals that adolescent women who engage in pre-marital sex are three times more likely to experience depression as those who do not.(Source: Halfors) Another study from the Heritage foundation shows that sexually active teens area also more likely to attempt suicide than those who are not. (Source: Rector)

And "Comprehensive" sexuality education (CSE) is anything but comprehensive. It may be comprehensive according to SEICUS and Planned Parenthood and governmental entities subject to political ideology. But many programs do not even mention the many health risks associated with hormonal contraceptives, including breast cancer and death. Also seemingly missing are the failure rates for contraceptives as well as the psychological harms of pre-marital sex.

Labeling a program as being comprehensive doesn't actually make it so. Also, who decides what is "comprehensive"?

The name of these programs may be innocuous, but the agenda behind them isn't. If one actually reads "Guidelines" for CSE published by SIECUS, it's not just about the birds and the bees.

"Guidelines" advocates the teaching of pluralistic sexual values to youth, and advocates acceptance of these values as being respectable. But not all sexual values in a pluralistic society are healthy or appropriate, nor should youth be taught to respect them.

The bottom line is that CSE programs are an attempt to impose sexual values on children, something the pro-contraception community supposedly despises. The name may be innocuous, and parents may think that a "comprehensive" program is what they want, but I doubt most parents are aware of details of such programs nor would they approve of them.

The threat to public health isn't from abstinence — it's from the contraceptive mentality that is pervasive in our culture. This mentality teaches that pre-martial sex, especially amongst adults in their 20s, is ok, and that the purpose of sex is recreation, and not intimacy and reproduction. This mentality has led to widespread abortion, disease, pregnancy, and misery. Abstinence has not led to any of this.

Instead of reinforcing an ideology is a significant threat to public health, the unequivocal message that should be given is that abstinence is the only foolproof way to avoid pregnancy and disease, and is the expected behavior until one gets married. When we send that message and expect that kind of behavior, we'll start seeing significant reductions in disease, pregnancy, and abortion.

Ruben Obregon President The No Room for Contraception Campaign www.NoRoomforContraception.com

Sources Cited:

Hofferth S, Kahn J, Baldwin W, Premarital Sexual Activity Among U.S. Teenage Women over the Past Three Decades, Family Planning Perspectives, Volume 19, Number 2, March/April 1987.

CDC, Latex Condoms and Sexually Transmitted Diseases — Prevention Messages, Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), via the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, available at http://dhfs.wisconsin.gov/aids-hiv/Resources/CDCconguide.pdf

Fu H, Darroch J, Haas T and Ranjit, N, Contraceptive Failure Rates: New Estimates From the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, Table 1, corrected unstandardized figure for first 12 months of use, Family Planning Perspectives, Volume 31, Number 2, March/April 1999, Guttmacher Institute, available at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3105699.html

Hallfors D, Waller M, Bauer D, Ford C, Halpern C., Which Comes First in Adolescence—Sex and Drugs or Depression?, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Available at http://www.cpc.unc.edu/uploads/4823/1764/whichfirstfinal.pdf

Rector R, Johnson K, Noyes L, Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely to Be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide, Center for ,Data Analysis Report , The Heritage Foundation, available at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Abstinence/cda0304.cfm

To 9:53:

Why don’t parents teach their children about sex themselves?

It should be called Unplanned Parenthood.

Everyone seems to ignore the fact that adolescence is a recent man-made concept. Once you hit puberty in some cultures, you’re an adult. In our culture, you have to be coddled until you’re a) old enough to be blown up in Iraq or 2) old enough to consume alcohol.

So, Bible bangers, God designed you to have sex at puberty, but you reject HIS plan for you until YOU’RE ready. Logical?

Rubin,

Well written, but it has one key flaw: no one is saying that schools should teach ONLY CSE. All anyone is saying is that everyone should have all the facts. I, and I’m sure most sane people, want there to be both CSE and Abstinence education in schools. Only when people have the full facts can they make an informed decision. The only evil is ignorance.

10:39am — Exactly! Parents are exactly the people to be educating children in matters of sexual behavior. However, the forced schooling machine in this country has been drilling parents for more than 90 years that they aren’t qualified nor do they have the expertise to do so. “Trust us, we’re the experts.”

12:18pm — You’re on to something really important. Our Prussian-style schooling system has made its mark on sexuality. Schooling holds kids in perpetual adolescence. Nobody wants to grow up. Schooling (=!education, there’s a big difference) turns people into consumer automatons. There’s no sense of tomorrow or the past, just the present and what feels good at the moment, where sex is simply a consumable.

Mr. Obregon,

You have two options:

You can live in a fantasy world where you think that you can change our media, our culture, and our biological instinct to reproduce upon reaching puberty with 3 weeks of classes for 45 minutes a day,

-or-

You can understand that, while in an ideal (for some) world no one would have sex until they are emotionally and financially ready for children, that this world will never exist and you have to do the best with what you’ve got. Therefore you teach kids about the advantages of waiting for sex, as well as options if they choose not to wait.

I choose not to live in fantasy.

Bingo, 3:12, at pointing out Rubin’s major flaw. Of course, there are also other significantly major flaws. First, for example, the high prevalence of extreme religious values among those who stay abstinent. As such, they may (a) either not believe in psychology, or (b) go through other resources (a pastor or priest) where they will not go diagnosed. The same thing may occur with suicide attempts. First, if they are religious, they may be so frightened of the eternal stigma of suicide that they wouldn’t attempt it. Second, even if they did attempt it, an extremely religious family may attempt to hide it by not disclosing that it was a suicide attempt, if possible, more than a more secular family.

No one is saying that condoms or any sort of birth control are completely effective. That’s why the way I was taught sex ed. was this: Abstinence is the only way to ensure that you will not get pregnant or an STD. But if you do choose to have sex, here are a series of precautions you can take to make it significantly less likely that the girl will get pregnant or either of you will get an STD. I still believe that is the most important way, because with or without sex ed, I was going to have sex before marriage.

There is theory, then there is real life.

The same implications can be made with the abortion debate.

“It’s you liberals who brought all this down on us. You made the mess this time around, YOU clean it up! We’re tired of seeing our tax dollars go to paying for your sick perverted lifestyles”

Hey guy, this is the one of the most ridiculous arguments I think you could make. Yes, throw the liberals out of Congress and then the immorality in the U.S. will just stop, and we can go back to those good ol’ days. First of all to try and say conservatives are on the the moral high ground in any respect is bogus. Did you look in the news today? Hey Newt Gingrich of the main men of the Conservative’s recclaiming of Congress in the 90’s, the man who lambasted Clinton for his immorality admitted to an affair during the Clinton trial. A hypocritical republican leader being discovered living a lifestyle going against every word of his Godly rhetoric, NO WAY? I’d never expect it. Quit trying to scapegoat the Democrat’s for modern society’s problems.

Hey I have an option - go live in the middle east with your prevelant sex-starved immoral behaviour! Do any of you libs live outside of your own head? Sure let your little puberty driven thoughts bring you to Herpes - sounds entriguing doesn’t it - no cure, pass it on to everyone you know!!!! Come on sweetie - it’s only Herpes - you have it forever - it doesn’t have to stop you either - your just an animal with instincts aren’t you? Please - at some point in you ego heads you have to come up for air - the lack of has caused the most immoral, stupid thinking ever. How about, do you want to live child? Wait until you are married with someone who also had never had an intimate relationship with another person before - it truly is beautiful - What GOD intended!

There are some vital inaccuracies in Ms. Friedman’s article.

(1) The article implies that states are prohibited from teaching comprehensive sex education in their schools if they accept federal abstinence education money (authorized under Title V of the Social Security Act). This is simply not true. States that accept Title V money CAN teach comprehensive sex ed in schools; they just can’t use Title V funds for that purpose. Comprehensive sex ed programs and abstinence education programs are not mutually exclusive, at least not according to any federal directive.

Relatedly, it is not commonly known that the federal government provides more funding for contraception programs than it does for abstinence. Take a look - these programs are still being funded today: http://www.house.gov/hensarling/rsc/doc/Abstinence4.PDF

(2) The article claims that states accepting Title V funds must provide abstinence education services to adults ages 20-29. Also not true. States have the flexibility to offer abstinence education services to people ages 20-29 using Title V money if they so choose, but they are in no way required to do so. This is purely up to the discretion of the state.

(3) The article makes the pejorative and illogical claim that President Bush doesn’t want kids to ever know about sex. In abstinence education, obviously one must know WHAT one is abstaining from. Also, abstinence education programs do not teach abstinence forever - they teach abstinence until marriage.

(4) Federal funding for abstinence education programs was put in place by Congress, not by President Bush. Not only that, but they came into existence under the Clinton administration, not the Bush administration. They were authorized as a part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 - a.k.a. Welfare Reform.

Public discussion about abstinence education versus comprehensive/contraception sex education is valuable, but please try to report the facts accurately.

Emily, please tell me how abstinence is unsafe. You’re obviously an ACLU member or supporter because that’s exactly how they describe abstinence. Funny, I never heard of abstinence ever causing any disease. As Rush Limbaugh says, it works every time it’s tried.

Also, have we come down to the mentality as you indicate “well, they’re going to do it anyway so we might as well let them do it, just use a condom” that we can’t believe better about the young people of today? Is it wrong to ask or expect a higher standard of teens and young adults today? After all, last I knew, we still were human beings and not wild animals.

Emily’s mentality is similar to an elderly person facing death due to an incurable disease and someone comes along and shoots him or her. “Well, they were going to die anyway so I wanted to make it easier for them by killing them now”.

No, not everyone is going to do it and those who don’t should be lauded instead of being scorned. My Lord, we have a near epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases and an emotional epidemic of young people giving up their bodies to someone they never intended to marry. Good grief, let’s believe in our kids that they can abstain and provide them the support to it. I did when I was a teen. Though society may have changed, standards are still the same, even if they are not adhered to today.