Real sex ed for real lives

Censorship. Misinformation. Indoctrination.

Parents don't associate these words with their children's education. Taxpayers don't expect such practices to be funded by millions of federal dollars. Yet when President Bush proposed a $39 million increase in federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education in his 2006 budget, he asked Congress to do just that.

If the president gets what he asked for, the federal government will throw nearly $206 million in the coming year into programs that are ineffective at best and dangerous at worst.

Truth. Accuracy. Responsibility. The Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act, recently introduced by lawmakers in both houses of Congress, is the remedy to unproven, misleading and harmful abstinence-only sex education. Federal abstinence-only programs focus exclusively on abstinence and often are prohibited from discussing contraceptives except in the context of their failure rates.

REAL programs would teach that abstinence is the only sure way to avoid pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections. But they would also include information about using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and infection.

REAL would also require programs to provide age-appropriate and medically accurate information and to refrain from using funds to preach religion, a constitutional safeguard that many abstinence-only programs fail to provide.

According to the most recent statistics, 822,000 15-19-year-olds got pregnant in 2000. Each year, about 9.1 million 15-24-year-olds are infected with sexually transmitted infections, including half of all new HIV infections.

Evaluations assessing five years of abstinence-only programs in Pennsylvania and nine other states show little short-term and no long-term impact in delaying sex among teens. When teens do initiate sex, they are a third less likely to use contraception, risking pregnancy and STDs.

But studies consistently demonstrate that programs that provide information about abstinence and effective use of contraception can help delay the start of sexual activity and increase condom use among sexually active teens. Yet there is currently no federal program dedicated to comprehensive sex education.

Leaving the effectiveness question aside, what about truth and accuracy? A recent review of federally funded abstinence-only curricula prepared by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) found that more than two-thirds of the programs give out distorted information about contraceptives, misrepresent the risks of abortion, blur religion and science, promote gender stereotypes and contain scientific errors. One abstinence-only curriculum wrongly asserts that 5 to 10 percent of women who have abortions will become sterile. Another suggests that HIV can be contracted through exposure to sweat and tears. Yet when lawmakers tried to add a medical accuracy requirement to the federal funding of abstinence-only programs, the effort fell on deaf ears.

Pennsylvania has declined to take federal dollars for instruction that misleads and endangers young people. State funding goes to a limited number of programs with demonstrated effectiveness.

To evade the state's science-based comprehensive sex-education policy, the Bush administration, aided by Pennsylvania Sens. Specter and Santorum, has contracted directly with abstinence-only programs that lack state oversight, without any showing that those programs actually work.

Defending his budget, President Bush rightly asserted, "A taxpayer dollar ought to be spent wisely or not spent at all."

In continuing to fund abstinence-only education and asking for an increase, the Bush administration, in partnership with Pennsylvania's senators, has shown that it is not interested in spending wisely or responsibly.

By Nancy Hopkins and Louise Melling

Nancy Hopkins is executive director, American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Louise Melling is director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

Letter to the editor, Philadelphia Daily News,  Mar 3, 2005