When Abstinence Advocates Attack

The women’s rights advocacy group Legal Momentum organized a hearing on Capitol Hill this Tuesday to publicize its newly released report, Sex, Lies & Stereotypes: How Abstinence-Only Programs Harm Women and Girls (pdf). The report was released as Congress is deciding whether to renew a controversial funding bill targeted at preventing HIV transmission overseas. The legislation is expected to loosen -- but not eliminate -- rules that prohibit the United States from giving money to any organization overseas that teaches anything other than abstinence-only sexual education.

While the hearing promised to be just another boilerplate Capitol Hill event, things got exciting when a handful of self-identified abstinence educators swept into the room. As Legal Momentum Staff Attorney Julie Kay read a litany of reasons why abstinence-only education is inefficient, harmful, and inaccurate as means for educating young people about sex, preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and preventing unwanted pregnancies, one man stood up and shouted, "Who here can admit that if you don't have sex you won't get an STD?" In fact, there are several ways to get an STD without having sexual intercourse -- such as through touching and oral sex. The human papillomavirus (more commonly known as HPV), for instance, can be transmitted through skin-to-skin contact.

Jennifer Heitel Yakush, a senior public policy associate at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), noted that "the first, second, and last" components of comprehensive sexual education should be about abstinence, but she emphasized that classes should also include information on how to correctly use condoms and other forms of contraception. Providing this information to young people is vital, Yakush said, so that whenever they do choose to become sexually active they will have all the information they need to remain healthy.

Abstinence-only education funding has a long history of bipartisan support. There are three ways that the programs are funded in the United States: the Adolescent Family Life Act, which was enacted under Ronald Reagan; a section of "welfare reform" legislated under Bill Clinton in 1996; and the Community Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) fund that was instituted in 2000.

Out of these three sources, CBAE has the most stringent rules. To receive money from the fund, a sexual-education program must teach an eight-point set of guidelines, which include lessons such as: “Sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects”; young people should know "how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increase vulnerability to sexual advances”; and why young people should attain “self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.” Financial independence, Kay said, is at best irrelevant to sexual activity. Eight congressional representatives including Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Jim Moran (D-VA), and Henry Waxman (D-CA) have signed a letter asking for the end of CBAE funding. In the meantime, more than a dozen states have already rejected abstinence-only education funding because of the eight-point restrictions.

“The only success [abstinence-only education] had was a political success by pandering to the right wing,” Waxman said at the hearing. He argued that abstinence-only education programs are “demeaning” and harmful to women. “I think we ought to pull the plug on funding them,” he said to applause from the audience.

An attendee who identified herself as a "nurse" and an "abstinence educator" argued that it will just take time for abstinence-only education to work, and compared the teaching method to seat belt laws and anti-smoking campaigns. (Anyone want to call Ralph Nader and see if he’s in favor of abstinence-only education?)