Brits: Abstinence is a myth

A hearty thank-you to Britain's Telegraph for reporting so bluntly on American research revealing the failure of American abstinence programs:

Sexual abstinence as an effective tool in reducing teenage pregnancy is a complete "myth", the Government's advisory body on the issue claimed yesterday.

The Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy said that research from the United States showed that contraception was the way to bring down rates. Researchers from Columbia University and the Guttmacher Institute examined the relative roles of abstinence and contraceptive use in the "remarkable decline" in US teenage pregnancy rates, which dropped 27 per cent from 1991 to 2000. They said that 86 per cent of the decline in teenage pregnancy was due to improved use of contraception.

Only 14 per cent of the drop amongst 15- to 19-year-olds was linked to reduced sexual activity, according to the study, published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

And if that didn't blow your mind, check out what Gill Frances, the chair of the governmental advisory group, concluded from this information: "Providing young people with good information, advice and contraceptive services, is the way to reduce teenage pregnancy. It is a myth that abstinence is a better approach and this US study confirms it."

Yoinks. It must be awesome to live in a real country run by grown-ups.