I’ll be writing in more detail about this later (probably in a day or two), but recent findings in Minnesota, where the State funds an abstinence-only sexual education program for its public schools, seem to be suggesting that the program is not effective.
The findings, in the form of an evaluation report, can be found here (.PDF format, 225K), an article on the findings can be found here, and the program’s website is saynotyet.com.
The key paragraphs in the article I linked to are:
That is still lower than the average rate of sexually active adolescents in those counties, researchers said. But the abstinence-only message would have been viewed as a success if the rates of sexual activity and sexual intentions among the ENABL group had remained about the same in each year, researchers said.
“Given how much money is being spent, it seems like a really weak intervention,” said Connie Schmitz, the outside consultant with Professional Evaluation Services of Minneapolis. Schmitz, who headed the study, said it raises serious questions about whether sexually active kids are getting the information they need to avoid pregnancy and infectious diseases.
I’m not well-versed in the statistical evidence related to contraception vs. abstinence-only programs (this is part of the reason for the delay before I write more on this subject) but having been through both contraception-based and abstinence-only sexual education programs I can say that I’m not entirely surprised that the abstinence-only programs don’t seem to be working. When I was going through those programs they were viewed by myself and my peers as something of a long, boring joke. Those of us who were going to end up having sex had already decided to have sex and those of us who weren’t planning on having sex had already decided to abstain.
Then again, the programs I went through were filled with lies, lies, and more lies. For instance, we were taught that the AIDS virus could slip through “tiny holes” in condoms (remember that one? No, the Vatican was not the first to spout that crap), that 90+% of women who had abortions suffer from terrible, mind-breaking depression with most of those going on to kill themselves, and that no contraceptives were effective even in the slightest degree.
Maybe I just got a bad program that left me with poor impressions, but I’m not surprised that the program in Minnesota doesn’t seem to be doing all that well.
Report via Atrios.
Edited for clarity, 0:55 1/5/03..
I heard the same crap in my crappy right wing home town’s school. I now know the AIDS permeating condoms is crap. I now know the contraceptives are ineffective is crap. However, I’ve never debunked the “women with abortions commit suicide or have mind-breaking depression” one. Someone care to hook me up with the straight dope on that? (And no, I’m not really looking for crap pseudo-science from the opposite side, if such exists) I wonder what other crap we were fed in “Health” class that I’m still carrying around.
Hey Edgewise…I don’t have a study, but I can tell you from personal experience that I had an abortion and am not at all suicidal or depressed (about the abortion or anything else).
Same goes for the several friends who have gone through the same thing.
Mostly we were a little sad and a lot relieved, because it is not fair to bring unwanted children into this world…
From “womens’ quarters” to bundling boards, chastity belts to murdering raped women, humankind has ever sought to inhibit its most urgent and entertaining drive. The absinence fraud is just the latest manifestation.
Years ago I had the pleasure of listening to an exchange between Gen Chris Vokes and the Airborne School Chaplains. The holy ones were arguing for better recreational facilities on base, “…to keep the lads in barracks on weekends instead of going off to cavort with a certain class of women in the city”. The General heard them out and then declared, “Gentlemen, you may have your ping pong tables, and whatever but please don’t think there is anything you can do that will make fucking unpopular…”
Plus ca change…
This study shows how hard it is to do social science studies. They should have done some sort of a baseline study first to find out how teenagers’ sexual behavior changes over time. As it is, there’s no way of telling whether the program had a negative effect, a positive effect or no effect at all. What would the teens have done in its absence?
But I do think that it’s criminal to give people false information (as also in the abortion-breast cancer link which the only proper study with Danish data disproved conclusively), and it’s very cruel not to give teens the information that could save their lives.
Besides, anything the schools preach the students will go against, if my teenage years are any guide more generally, so preaching abstinence could have the very opposite effect from the intended one.
Please go back and close your italics tag.
:-)
According to a study cited by a StarTribune article, “Studies show that 10 percent of women who have abortions experience depressive symptoms of a lingering nature. The same symptoms occur in just as many women after childbirth.”
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about 12% of American women in general are affected by a depressive disorder each year, and 9.5% of the general population suffers from clinical depression.
Regarding whether women are depressed after having had an abortion, it would be kind of interesting to do really, really deep research into that, that would use some sort of methodology to pinpoint the various causes of the depression. I would start out with the hypothesis that if a woman has been brought up to believe that abortion is murder, or a grave sin, etc., she would be more prone to post-abortion depression than if she had been raised in a way that did not impose these judgements. However, I would try after that to really look at the evidence to see if it is borne out. I think this sort of social research is really difficult to do, though. Wonder if Planned parenthood or any other sort of group has ever tried.
Just to clear something up: I’m not sure if I was clear enough in the original post (and will edit for clarity) but I was taught that all women, or at least a proportion in the ninetieth percentile, who had abortions became suicidally depressed. I understand that some do, but I know for a fact that not all do.
And thanks, Tom T., for the tip on the italics tag. It should be closed now.
Where and when were you taught that the vast majority of women who have abortions become suicidally depressed?
A few years ago I met a high-school teacher who ranted to me that she was not permitted to recommend abstinence in her sex-education classes. I doubted this, and expect what she meant is that she wasn’t allowed to propagandize on the subject, because she went on to say that abstinence was the only 100% effective way of preventing STDs.
“It’s not 100% effective,” I said. “You could be raped.” Fortunately she didn’t reply that rape victims were asking for it and therefore weren’t practicing abstinence; instead she quibbled and said that not having voluntary sex was the only 100% effective way of not getting STDs through voluntary sex. But that’s tautological, isn’t it?
It’s like saying, “Don’t worry about seat belts or their safety record; just don’t get into a car. Not riding in a car is the only 100% effective way of not being killed in an auto accident.” (whisper: bystanders are often killed in auto accidents) “Er, I mean that not riding in a car is the only 100% effective way of not being killed in an auto accident when you’re riding in a car.”
Even in my Roman Catholic, Canadian high school, we were taught the statistical effectiveness of the different kinds of birth control (some in the 80th percentile, some in the 97th, like the pill… don’t remember patches or injections or anything like that being available when I was a young pup), and then told that the only way to 100% protect was to abstain completely. And this was a Roman Catholic (ie- birthcontrol=going to hell) school.
What I would like to see is more education on how oral sex can transmit disease, because from the antecdotal evidence I’ve heard from current teens, that seems to be the fashion now (get/give a blowjob, don’t get pregnant).
But what I’m left wondering is… do all US highschools have some sort of frantic, mind-numbing insanity problem, permeating the teachers and students and school board? Even in conservative, Roman Catholic Canada, we got a pretty basic, honest and forthright sexual education, starting in grade 5 and continuing until highschool graduation.
You would think the Roman Catholic contingent would be the most rabid, least honest of the campaigns against sex. Apparently this is not so.
“However, I’ve never debunked the “women with abortions commit suicide or have mind-breaking depression” one. Someone care to hook me up with the straight dope on that?”
I don’t know if it’s online in an English version, but a recent large Danish study showed that there were no correlation between depressions/suicides and abortions. When I say recent, I’m talking within the last two months – or at least Danish newspapers wrote about it within the last two months.
Women from the anti-abortion/anti-gay marriage side told their own stories about “post-abortion syndrome” to the Mass. legislature. This was during the gay marriage hearings — before the gay marriage ruling went down. They had help from their churches in blaming their abortions for their depression when, by their own words, their own dreadful marriages and (in some cases) abusive upbringings had more to do with their problems than any abortion. One woman who was married to an alcoholic with behavior “issues” blamed the abortion for his behavior and her divorce. I only wonder what things would have been like for her if she had that baby and THEN divorced? She’d probably be on the custody hearing merry-go-round.
It made me angry that those fundies used to women, convinced them that the abortion caused their problems, and continued to use them as political fodder.
Even worse — some of them brought their new infants along as props.
I elaborated a little more on my blog to include information about Christian divorce rates. A Barna Research study has some pro-marriage ideologues doing the avoidance dance.
If you guys think abortion won’t do harms to women’s body, pass me the pipe.
It’s just natural for women who had abortions to suffer from terrible, mind-breaking depression. There’s nothing that can hurt a woman more than an abortion.
Keep up the sex.
Evidence, please?
My sex education had more to do with menstrual sanitation than sex. In fact, I don’t remember a single teacher uttering anything about abstinence than birth control. We were given an explanation about how our organs worked, separated by sex and given no explanation about the opposite sex.
The girls in my crowd thankfully knew of and went to the local planned parenthood. Many of the girls I went to school with never visited a gynecologist during high school unless something were medically out of whack.
I’m a strong believer in preventative medicine, including having the proper information to prevent medical maladies, regarding sexual health this includes everything from how to identify a yeast infection to how to prevent an unplanned pregnancy. When a boy I grew up with lost a testicle for being afraid to mention to his parents a long-term pain he was having, that pretty much made up my mind. We were fourteen.
Sorry. That would be “about abstinence or birth control.”
Thanks for the statistics and anecdotes. It’s nice to know the truth.
Lying in sexual education classes, barring women from necessary medical procedures, punishing those people who most need support, and ostracizing those who are most in pain.
Canadians may not understand that we don’t really have many real conservatives in America. We instead have radical regressives, who seek to go back to a point in the past avoid progressive “mistakes” rather than conservatives who wish to be slow and sure about progressive change.
American religious radical regressives want to go back to before feminism, some before suffrage, some back to the dark ages. They want a fantasy land where women are to be dutiful, abstinent outside of marriage (and not enjoying sexual duties during), and submissive, and everyone will be pious (not spiritual) out of fear of God, with a benevolent theocracy policing morality, just in case of the unenlightened.
When someone feels that any action is justified, they do unjustifiable things (in this case in the name of God). However, when someone has a no holds barred pursuit of an impossibility, they are hugely destructive to no end. This is why America seems so insane to foreigners. It’s not just religious radical regressives either. We’ve got economic as well.
do all US highschools have some sort of frantic, mind-numbing insanity problem, permeating the teachers and students and school board?
In many public highschoos, i would say yes. I’ve seen the effects of public education have on teenagers and it ain’t pretty. I’d almost swear some of them came out dumber than they were when they went in. As for private schools, it varies. I went to a rather conservative private school in VA but in the 6th grade we had a liberal sex ed class that covered everythign from the stats for various prophalactics to the old put-the-rubber-on-the-banana lesson. While this class was not mandatory, not a single student’s parent opted to have their child excluded. Perhaps this was because something like 60% of the student’s parents were doctors, but that’s just a guess.
do all US highschools have some sort of frantic, mind-numbing insanity problem, permeating the teachers and students and school board?…
I’d almost swear some of them came out dumber than they were when they went in.
I’ll counter Keith here because I’m a public school teacher in training and a huge advocate of the PS system.
The problem isn’t what the teachers and school boards want, it’s what the parents want. It’s been a long known fact among teachers that many elected spots on the school board (especially in the midwest) are seated with or pursued by evangelical Christians who advocate for the eradication of comprehensive sex education. It doesn’t help that a certain evangelical Christian in a certain high office has maintained a lack of funding for any school who doesn’t teach abstinence education as the main form of sex education.
Furthermore, you take underfunded school systems constantly threatened with lawsuits… The threat of a the loss of money for these schools, hell most schools, is frightening. There have been schools in my area that have been forced to close their doors thanks to underfunding and lawsuits over curriculum, and one is even being sued by a superintendent who caused one school system, the best public school in the state, a gigantic loss of funding due to her economic mismanagement.
People are voting against taxes that fund schools, bills that support schools, bills that pay teachers, proposals that would help to build new schools and relieve pressure on overpopulated and underfunded schools, and everyone wonders why public schools are in a difficult position trying to decide what and how to teach. At the same time that people resent paying taxes that fund these schools, they lament the loss of music, art, and sports programs. Hard to run these programs without money, eh?
President Bush’s NCLB is another post altogether, but we are leaving kids in the dust by denying them information to make good decisions about their sexual behavior. Abstinence education is even being seen as the violation of the first amendment. http://www.ncac.org/cen_news/cn80sexeducation.html
Specifically, under the new provisions of NCLB,
“Funds cannot be used for condom or other contraceptive distribution, obscene materials, promotion of sexual activities, or for sex education in schools that is not age- appropriate and does not emphasize abstinence.”
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/nclbreference/page_pg65.html?exp=0
Scroll way down to the bottom of the page.
Another states:
“(a) PROHIBITION- None of the funds authorized under this Act shall be used —
(1) to develop or distribute materials, or operate programs or courses of instruction directed at youth, that are designed to promote or encourage sexual activity, whether homosexual or heterosexual;
(2) to distribute or to aid in the distribution by any organization of legally obscene materials to minors on school grounds;
(3) to provide sex education or HIV-prevention education in schools unless that instruction is age appropriate and includes the health benefits of abstinence; or
(4) to operate a program of contraceptive distribution in schools.”
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg112.html?exp=0
Althought it outlines the concerns very clearly, no terms within these concerns are defined. What is age-appropriate? What is obscene? What is promotion of sexual activity and what is not?
No wonder the confusion.
The funny thing is that although many think public schools are in a crisis, a “crisis” that crops up every decade for the last 100 years (read your PS history – it’s fascinating), very few report that it is happening in their area and that the public schools their kids go to are doing just fine.
If anyone is interested in a reading list on the state of public schools, students, and teachers, I’ll gladly compile a list. I’m drowning in educational material.
And one final question:
What does abstinence education have to offer to homosexual teens who told to wait until marriage for a sexual relationship?
I’ll go into this in more depth in my follow-up posts about abstinence-only education, but Ms. Lauren brings up a good point.
Considering the types of people who usually campaign for abstinence-only sexual education, though, I don’t think they would view gays and lesbians not having sex as a problem. Most of the supporters of abstinence-only sexual education support those programs for the sake of moral ideals rather than pragmatic goals and often have morals which suggest that homosexuality is wrong.
I haven’t read through all the comments, so someone might have mentioned this. I currently work for an organization in youth risk behavior prevention (specifically STD prevention.) To be a bit clearer for you Atrios, there is currently no study that adequately compares comprehensive sexuality education with abstinence-only education. A report published by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy called “Emerging Answers” compares several programs and their effectiveness of delaying the onset of sexual activity and whether this helps to prevent teen pregnancy (nothing was mentioned about preventing STIs) Another report (if you are interested in exploring this) comes from an organization called The Medical Institute for Sexual Health. That report (called “Building Healthy Futures”) evaluates abstinence curricula for effectiveness in delaying the onset of sexual activity. No group has done a study of one (comprehensive) against the other (abstinence).
Sorry, austexchica, I’m not Atrios but thanks for the compliment.
Your comment was very insightful and pretty much confirmed what I’d suspected: no one has bothered to compare comprehensive sexual education to abstinence-only sexual education. You would think that with all of the debates raging on the subject, someone would have decided to really do a study, but no.
You obviously have an edge over me in terms of your knowledge of the subject. My research has found some of what you’ve mentioned, but I’m interested in knowing more. If you’d be willing to drop me an e-mail with the names of some other studies, I’d be greatly appreciative.
Opps! Sorry, I didn’t read the “posted by” section. I’d be more than happy to point you to some other resources on this subject. I’ll e-mail you some info in the next week or so. Thanks!