Pre-Life Crisis

So normally, selfish person that I am, I talk about myself on my little blog. However, I read a news story today that made me SO MAD that I had to post it for four other people to read.

I think abstinence-only education is one of the dumbest ideas ever. My high school taught (which might be a stretch of the word) an abstinence-only sex ed class. Really, what they did was pull some classes randomly and send us down to the lecture hall. If you didn't say that you didn't want to go, you were subjected to a thirty-minute slide show of genitals infected with STDs. It was pretty gross. But there was no mention whatsoever of how to avoid getting STDs. The only mention of pregnancy came after one particularly traumatizing slide of genital warts, where the doctor presenting it mentioned that pregnant women cannot get warts removed and that they grow a lot during pregnancy. The doctor who presented this slide show was an OB/GYN who volunteered his time and yucky pictures. Maybe the school told him he couldn't talk about sex, and so he just wanted to scare us a little. Point is, if the doctor hadn't stopped by with his traveling slide show, the students of Ryan High never would have had any acknowledgement at all of sex. Even with the slide show, students received no education other than watch out for dirty legs.

Enough of my rambling. Suffice it to say that I don't like the idea of my tax money (were I to earn enough to pay federal income taxes) going to pay for programs with lies, backasswards gender stereotypes, and outright scare tactics. Sacrificing the health and future well-being of high school students for the Right's agenda is unacceptable.

And without further delay, I present for your reading pleasure "Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says" from today's Washington Post.

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.

Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex. But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a critic of the administration who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.

Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since the efforts began in 1999. Waxman's staff reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula -- those used by at least five programs apiece.

The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact.

Among the misconceptions cited by Waxman's investigators:
• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."
• HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.
• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.

One curriculum, called "Me, My World, My Future," teaches that women who have an abortion "are more prone to suicide" and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the Waxman report said.

(cut out Right-Wingers defending accuracy, attacking thinking people)

Nonpartisan researchers have been unable to document measurable benefits of the abstinence-only model. Columbia University researchers found that although teenagers who take "virginity pledges" may wait longer to initiate sexual activity, 88 percent eventually have premarital sex.

Bill Smith, vice president of public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a comprehensive sex education group that also receives federal funding, said the Waxman report underscored the need for closer monitoring of what he called the "shame-based, fear-based, medically inaccurate messages" being disseminated with tax money. He said the danger of abstinence education lies in the omission of useful medical information.

Some course materials cited in Waxman's report present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support." One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

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I think I may shoot an e-mail off to Waxman thanking him for his report. It may be letter to the editor time as well. I'm pretty damn mad.