Steve Benen enlightened me today of the fight at capitol hill to do away with abstinence only education. In fact, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, a religious right organization, claims that, "“Liberals Want Federal Abstinence Education Cut."
It's true! Their report states, "President Bush’s 2009 budget proposal includes $204 million to support Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE), but dozens of liberals in Congress want all abstinence money axed from the budget." Their concern to "defend" the mis-education of sex to our teens comes at time that the CDC reports 1 in 4 teen girls has a sexually transmitted infection (STI).
I have always been an advocate for quality education in our publics schools and that is not limited to sex. Benen adds, "It’s quite simple: the evidence that abstinence-only is more effective doesn’t exist." It doesn't take a genius to figure that our either. One only needs to do research for about a day to gather evidence to counter the administrations claims.
ABC News reports, "the Journal of Adolescent Health found that those who received comprehensive sex education were 50 percent less likely to become pregnant than those who received abstinence-only education. The study also found that those who received comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to become pregnant than those who received no sex education at all." It's quite evident that Bush Administration has fudged everything the past 8 years and his approach to "abstinence-only" education is one of them. The reason why the CDC found such alarming ratings of STI's among teen girls should be a wake up call to all Americans but in particular parents that the last 8 years of abstinence only education has not been cutting it.
