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USA Today (USA), June 23, 2004 Abstinence-only support varies
widely among states BYLINE: Steve Sternberg and Anthony DeBarros Funding for abstinence-until-marriage sex education in schools seesaws dramatically from state to state, with far more spent per student in some Southeastern and south-central states than elsewhere, a new analysis shows. Federal and state spending ranged from a high of $ 7.67 for each kindergarten-through-12th-grade pupil in Arkansas to a low of 21 cents per pupil in New Hampshire. Some states with the greatest amount of federal abstinence-only funding are political battleground states, notably Ohio and Florida. The USA TODAY analysis draws from the first available state profiles of comprehensive sex education and abstinence-until-marriage programs. They were released Tuesday by SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, an advocacy group. The Bush administration is pouring increasing sums into abstinence-only programs, which are meant to eliminate sexual risks by encouraging young people to abstain from premarital sex. The $ 258 million proposed for 2005, twice this year's funding, has grown from the $ 59 million spent in 1998, when the latest abstinence-only push began. States have supplied another $ 37.5 million in matching money. Tamara Kreinin, SIECUS president, says the amount of money each state gets often reflects the state's political leanings. There also is California, she says, the only state that won't accept federal abstinence-only grants, because its state law says sexual instruction must be medically accurate. It also must include information on other methods of preventing pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Many researchers also question whether abstinence-only education programs work. One recent study, drawn from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on 12,000 U.S. teens, found that those who pledged virginity until marriage got sexually transmitted diseases at the same rate as teens who did not. Teens who took pledges waited longer before having sex for the first time and had fewer partners. But they also were less likely to use condoms once they did have sex. Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Wade Horn, who is expected to administer abstinence-only spending, counters: "It's no small achievement to help young people to delay onset of sex activity and reduce lifetime sexual partners. The later one initiates sex activity, and the fewer partners you have, the lower your risk of an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease." The new analysis was too limited to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in schools. If anything stands out, it's the lack of a statistically significant link between abstinence-only spending and measures of risk. South Dakota, which ranked third in abstinence spending with $ 6.56 per pupil in grades K-12, had a teenage pregnancy rate of 54 per 1,000. Maine, which ranked near the bottom with 85 cents per pupil, had a rate of 52 per 1,000. << USA Today -- 6/23/04 >>
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