Abstinence programs called misleading

By Ceci Connolly
The Washington Post

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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 popular projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

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 Waxman, D-Calif., an administration critic who long has argued for comprehensive sex education.

Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since 1999. Waxman's staff reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula.

The report concluded that two curricula were accurate, but 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, factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, 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, which 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 teaches that women who have an abortion "are more prone to suicide" and that up to 10 percent become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook, the report said.

Condoms, used properly, fail less than 3 percent of the time, federal researchers say, and it is unknown how many gay teenagers are HIV-positive. The assertion regarding gay teenagers may be a misinterpretation of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that 59 percent of HIV-infected males ages 13 to 19 contracted the virus through male-to-male sex.
 
Joe McIlhaney, who runs the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, which developed much of the surveyed material, said he was "saddened" that Waxman chose to "blast" well-intentioned educators when there is much the two sides could agree on.

Congress first allocated money for abstinence-only programs in 2001, setting aside $80 million in grants, which go to a variety of religious, civic and medical organizations. President Bush has backed the movement enthusiastically, proposing to spend $270 million in 2005. Congress reduced that to about $168 million, bringing total abstinence spending to nearly $900 million over five years.

Supporters of the abstinence approach, also called abstinence until marriage, say teaching young people about "safer sex" is an invitation to have sex.

Nonpartisan researchers, however, 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, 88 percent eventually have premarital sex.