Lloyd Kolbe, director of the CDC's division of school and adolescent health, said. He added that the abstinence-focused program increased condom use and delayed the onset of sexual activity among teens.
A "rigorous" federally funded study of abstinence-only education programs is currently underway but will not be completed until Elders Advocates Straight Talk on Sex There is "no scientific basis that abstinence-only education is effective," and the U.
Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders writes in a Newsday op-ed. She writes, "There are about 12 million problems with [abstinence-only education] -- 12 million being the number of sexually active teens in the country who are 19 or younger. In fact, comprehensive sexuality education delays first intercourse, reduces the risk of teenage pregnancy and reduces the number of sexual partners," Elders says. To decrease STD transmission and pregnancy among youth, Elders recommends greater funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education for students from kingergarten through high school.
Nick Kristof seems to repeat this notion in The New York Times every other week, and Bono affirmed it when he insisted on putting Bush on one of the 20 different covers that graced Vanity Fair 's special Africa issue. She says President Bush can count the rock star as a fan today," the newspaper's blog reported in late May. It's a moral conundrum: how do you weigh lives saved by treatment against lives lost through policies that sabotage prevention? Thanks in part to the program, upwards of , people are now getting anti-retrovirals that can turned AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic condition.
There are remarkable stories of those once wasted and desiccated now restored to life. Bush has ever done. But that's not saying very much at all. Like most of the administration's financial figures, the numbers were misleading. It remains to be seen, though, how much of it will be spent in ways that worsen the epidemic instead of making it better.
Under the current policy, one third of the money allocated to HIV prevention goes to abstinence-only campaigns, often run by evangelical allies of the administration. But this figure is also deceptive, because the prevention budget includes things like fighting mother-to-child transmission. In fact, a full two-thirds of the money for the prevention of the sexual spread of HIV goes to abstinence.
Congress has yet to take a bold stand against the failures of abstinence-only programs based on the growing evidence. Perhaps they could at least be moved to take a stand against this perversion of the appropriations and authorizations process by ideologues at HHS.
Patterson closes the letter with this ideological statement alienating all single parents, and ignoring the fact that abstinence-only programs are proven to leave teens ill-equipped to deal with the reality of sexually transmitted diseases,. Comprehensive sexuality education that includes abstinence and awareness of reality, based on public health standards and real evidence, is what most Americans support.
It is what our government should support as well. Article originally appeared on RH Reality Check. Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? Main Menu U. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline.
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