If You Tell A Lie Often Enough...

In almost every news story or report about sex education you hear, "It is a 'well known fact' that abstinence education doesn't work, that comprehensive sex education does, and spending government funds on abstinence education is a waste of taxpayer's money.

But is it really?

On May 13, 2009, the Institute for Research and Evaluation published an evaluation of the EFFECTIVENESS of "Comprehensive" Sex Education (CSE, which means introduce abstinence but promote using "protection") and "Abstinence" Sex Education (ASE, which means avoiding sexual activity). You can read the entire paper here, but here are some interesting findings:

NO school-based "comprehensive" sex education program has been shown:

• to increase the number of teens who use condoms consistently for more than 3 months
• to decrease teen pregnancy or STD rates for any group for any period of time
• to increase both the number of teens who were abstaining and the number of sexually teens using condoms

The argument against Abstinence Education has always been "there's no proof that it works," so we should cut off government funding for it. What's really amusing (if you appreciate dark humor, I mean) is that it's Comprehensive Sex Ed. which can't be proven effective. As I've stated before, the goal of CSE is to increase condom/birth control use among the sexually active. If abstinent teens entering a CSE program become sexually active BUT using condoms at the end of it, it's still considered an EFFECTIVE program.

Think that through... if teens who weren't sexually active BEFORE are sexually active and using "protection" AFTER, your program works. Never mind if the protection fails. Never mind if more teens are at-risk for pregnancy and infection. You're not measuring rates of pregnancy and STDs... you can just ASSUME "protection" protects, so you don't have to measure that stuff!

And here's the REALLY funny part --- the people who develop and sell CSE programs are the ones who get to evaluate which programs are effective! Yep. They decide what to measure, which studies to look at and then they get taxpayer money to publish their reports which --- gasp! --- show ASE doesn't work, but CSE does!

I have to admit, you can't place ALL the blame for the myths about CSE on the program developers and condom distributors. Part of the blame falls on ASE educators and program developers who are notoriously naive. In the past, they haven't designed into their programs measurements of condom use, teen pregnancy or reduction in STDs. If your goal is teaching teens how NOT to give in to their sexual impulses, then you'd naturally want to know if your program has an impact on that.

But if you want to compare ASE to CSE, you would have to ask your abstinent participants, "Are you using condoms and birth control?" (Because, after all, that's what CSE programs measure and you want to compare apples to apples, right?)

BUT if you're successful at teaching abstinence, your participants will tell you "No, we are not using condoms and birth control."

TA-DA! There's your proof! ASE isn't effective because it doesn't INCREASE the number of teens using condoms and birth control!

Welcome to my world.