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Feature Story - Just Say No? Sierra Club supports comprehensive domestic family planning programs that work to slow population growth and ensure a better environment for future generations. To address the fact that the United States' teen pregnancy rate is higher than any other industrialized nation, we must support sexuality education programs that encourage both abstinence and contraception - the only sexuality education programs proven to be successful.
Information provided by Advocates for Youth The sexual health status of youth in the United States is dismal compared to other industrialized nations and faces a future blurred by misguided political policies. With over 4,000 adolescent incidents of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and an annual teen pregnancy rate of almost 900,000, unfortunately the United States leads the industrialized world in its inability to adequately meet the sexual health needs of of its youth. Today, controversy rages over how best to address this dilemma. Does a "just say no" to sex campaign work? Medical professionals and research experts just say "no." Yet, over the past five years, Congress has pumped over half a billion taxpayer dollars into unproven abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. These programs withhold vital information about the health benefits of contraception and condoms to prevent unintended pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs teach that "sexual activity outside marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects" and that "a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity." Attempting to fulfill a campaign promise to his conservative supporters, President Bush recently proposed a whopping 83% increase to these unproven programs in his FY 2004 budget proposal. In contrast, comprehensive sex education programs that teach about abstinence AND contraception have been proven to be effective in assisting young people to make healthy decisions about their sexual and reproductive health. Yet, these programs receive no specifically allocated US funding. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and the former Surgeon General of the United States all have published research analyses supporting the effectiveness of comprehensive sex education. The Institute of Medicine called on Congress to rescind funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage education due to a lack of evidence supporting its effectiveness.
To support what medical professional recommend, what parents prefer their children to be taught and what teens say they need, a coalition of civil rights, education, medical, family planning, HIV/AIDS, reproductive rights, and youth development organizations worked with Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jim Greenwood (R-PA) and Lynn Woolsey’s (D-CA) offices to draft the Family Life Education Act. If passed, the Act will provide funding to states to design and implement comprehensive sex education programs that include information about abstinence and the health benefits of contraception and condoms. If we are committed to providing young people with the tools they need to make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health, then we must offer more than "just say no." For more information about comprehensive sex education, check out these two websites:
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Photo of mexican couple courtesy of David and Lucile Packard Foundation
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Just Say No?
The majority of the public also supports a more comprehensive approach to sex education. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 85 % of parents want schools to teach information about condoms and 90% want schools to teach about other forms of birth control, while 88% of students felt they needed to be taught all aspects of sexuality education – including birth control and safer sex. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy found the majority of adults (69%) and teens (67%) support both a greater emphasis on encouraging teens not to have sex and a greater emphasis on contraception – rather than one or the other. Even the majority of those polled by the conservative Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family approved of adolescents having "good knowledge of condoms/contraceptives and their use."