Abstinence or Contraceptive Sex Education Programs?

Kelly Glesinger Abstinence or Contraceptive Sex Education Programs? May 30, 2008 George, A. (2005, March 5). Going All the Way. New Scientist. Accessed via: http://elibrary.bigchalk.com Normally all sex education programs include information about contraceptives. But now there are many types of programs. A new program is one that strongly supports the theory, “just say no”. It includes urging virginity pledges and only stating the failure rates of condoms and other contraceptives. Many of these programs take the failure rate out of context. They overemphasize the statistics and sometimes even use false data to help sway the student’s minds about contraceptives. The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rates and the rates of sexually transmitted diseases have almost doubled or tripled in the past decade. Fifty-sixty percent of teens have lost their virginity by the age of seventeen. The US has become worried about this issue and has finally realized that some people are going to have sex, so they may as well show them how to be safe about it. They have taken notice to a program that the Netherlands has been successful with. The Netherlands has developed a sex education program that is more obvious and is more open about sex. Resulting in less casual sex and the average age for the losing their virginity among teens is much higher. Another type of sex education program is the “abstinence-plus” program. In this program they only mention contraceptives and try not to talk much about them. They mainly stick with the abstinence only policy and strongly urge teens to pledge to virginity. However, some ease up on the guidelines and have an abstinence only policy till they are in a long term committed relationship. Many of these programs have had research done and the results are pretty much devastating. Three of the abstinence-only programs have had no effect on the teen pregnancy rates or on their sexual behaviors at all. Another study on a virgin