Expensive and Ineffective
Saturday, February 24, 2007; Page A18
The Feb. 10 front-page article exposing the exercise in which multiple students chew one piece of gum as a metaphor for premarital sex neglected the most disturbing aspect: More than $200 million in federal funding goes to such low-quality abstinence-only programs each year.
Comprehensive sexuality education programs that teach adolescents decision-making skills for a lifetime have been driven out of Montgomery County and other school districts nationwide. Instead antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers receive large federal subsidies to provide inaccurate and biased abstinence-only education. The federally funded curriculum that the Rockville Pregnancy Center provides -- Worth the Wait -- uses scare tactics mostly aimed at girls while failing to teach about contraceptives or condoms.
These just-say-no lessons are dangerously ineffective, and as the proportion of young people with HIV-AIDS continues to rise, young women especially are put at risk. Congress must halt seven years of federal funding for programs that use overly simplistic and biased abstinence-only tactics.
JULIE F. KAY
Staff Attorney
Legal Momentum
New York
