More Talk, Less Sex? Abstinence Works?
Yet another study this week…this one published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescents Medicine indicates that abstinence only education classes can actually work. Of the students studied (6th and 7th graders) one third of the abstinence class had sex within two years compared with about half of the students in the other classes.
The study also indicated that students chose to delay sex (because the program encouraged delaying, not waiting until marriage like most federal programs), it did not reduce condom use in young teens who did have sex, and the educators did answer questions regarding contraceptives if the questions arose.
“This is the most rigorous study to date,” says Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. “It just verifies what we’ve known intuitively all along, which is that abstinence-only education is a very important strategy to help young people delay having sex.”
Dr. Jemmott’s research followed 662 African-American children in the 6th and 7th grade at urban middle schools. The classes covered HIV, abstinence and ways to resist pressure to have sex.
“Because African-Americans tend to have a higher rate of early sexual initiation than others, we thought that within two years, a reasonable number would start having sex,” Dr. Jemmott said. “If we went younger, we couldn’t show that intervention works.”
The study results come at a time when pregnancy rates are up and the Obama administration is looking to cut abstinence only funding in favor of pregnancy prevention programing.
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