Real Sex-Ed for Real Lives

February 22, 2005 by Margaret Crosby and David Robertson, The San Francisco Chronicle

Censorship. Misinformation. Indoctrination. Parents don't associate these words with their children's education, and taxpayers don't expect such practices to be funded by millions of federal dollars. Yet, when President Bush proposed a $39 million increase in federal funding for abstinence-only- until-marriage sex education in his 2006 budget, he asked Congress to do just that. If the president gets what he asked for, the federal government will throw nearly $206 million in the next fiscal year into programs that a growing body of evidence shows are ineffective at best and dangerous at worst.

Truth. Accuracy. Responsibility. The Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act, introduced in Congress earlier this month by Rep. Barbara Lee, D- Oakland, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., is the antidote to misleading abstinence-only sex education. REAL programs would teach that abstinence is the only sure way to avoid pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections, but they would also include information about how to use contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and infection. In addition, REAL would require funded programs to provide age-appropriate and medically accurate information and to refrain from using taxpayer dollars for religious indoctrination.

California is the only state in the nation that has never accepted federal abstinence-only money. The state's policy, embodied in a law that took effect in 2004, is that sex education in our public schools must be medically accurate, free of bias and comprehensive, covering all methods of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections approved by the Food and Drug Administration, in addition to abstinence. We therefore decline to take federal dollars for instruction that misleads and endangers young people.

A recent review of federally funded abstinence-only curricula prepared by Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Los Angeles, found that more than two-thirds of the programs reviewed contain basic scientific errors, distort information about contraceptives, misrepresent the risks of abortion, blur religion and science and promote gender stereotypes. One curriculum wrongly asserts that 5 percent to 10 percent of women who have abortions will become sterile. (Standard obstetrics textbooks state that abortion has no effect on women's future fertility.) Another incorrectly suggests that HIV can be contracted through exposure to sweat and tears.

To evade California's science-based, comprehensive sex-education policy, the Bush administration channels federal abstinence-only funds through a back door, contracting directly with organizations in the state. One recipient is Await and Find of Hayward, which provides instruction to students in several East Bay school districts, including Newark and Fremont. Another, Teen Awareness, Inc., of Fullerton, teaches in more than 25 school districts in Southern California.

In a federal budget that includes the deepest cuts to domestic spending in two decades, including huge reductions to health-care programs for the poor, food stamps and research on chronic diseases, what's responsible about increasing funding for ineffective abstinence-only education? According to the most recent statistics, 822,000 women 15- to 19-years-old got pregnant in 2000; each year, approximately 9.1 million 15- to 24-year-olds get sexually transmitted infections, including one-half of all new HIV infections. Texas, Pennsylvania and other states that have evaluated their abstinence-only programs have found they have had little impact on helping teens to delay having sex. Indeed, a study by Columbia University researchers of "virginity pledges," as well as other "abstinence-only" studies, show evidence of increasing risk-taking behaviors among sexually active teens.

In contrast, studies published by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, among others, show that comprehensive programs can help delay the start of sexual activity and increase condom use among sexually active teens.

Defending his budget, Bush rightly asserted, "A taxpayer dollar ought to be spent wisely or not spent at all." In continuing to fund abstinence-only education and in further asking for an increase in spending, the Bush administration has shown that it is not interested in spending wisely or responsibly.

When it comes to protecting America's youth, the REAL Act is clearly the wise choice. America's youth must not pay the high price for government irresponsibility about sex education.

Margaret C. Crosby is a staff lawyer and David Robertson is a volunteer lawyer with the ACLU of Northern California (www.aclunc.org).