The federal government has spent about $1.3 billion on abstinence education programs since 1996. A House of Representatives hearing yesterday suggested it has been money wasted.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called the hearing to assess the facts concerning the federal Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Program, an 11-year effort to provide funding to states for abstinence-only sexual education classes. These programs must exclusively teach that abstinence is the best protection from STDs and pregnancy and that “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.” On the other end of the spectrum, comprehensive sex ed programs inform teens how they can protect themselves should they decide to engage in sexual activity.

The general conclusion of the hearing was rather pat: Abstinence education is idealistic, and it backfires when teens decide to have sex because they have no knowledge of other protection methods. MotherJones blogger Stephanie Mencimer agrees:

About a bazillion studies have all found that not only does abstinence-only education not work to reduce unwed pregnancy or STDs, but that it perpetuates false information about the reliability of the things that do work, disparages gays and lesbians, promotes religion in public schools, and demeans women.

Those “bazillion” studies, all linked off of the ACLU website, provide evidence that abstinence education does not decrease pre-marital sex and may even deter teens from who are sexually active from using protection.

The studies backing their conclusion, however, is not as conclusive as they imply. One study Rep. Henry Waxman referenced, a supposed “rigorous, multi-year, scientific evaluation” has received critique—its data included only 4 of approximately 700 abstinence programs across the country.

Dr. Stan Weed, a witness at the hearing, reported findings from the Institute for Research and Evaluation concluding that abstinence education programs “can reduce teen sexual activity by as much as one half for periods of one to two years.” Their study* involved more than 100 evaluations of programs in 30 states across 15 years. And The Heritage Foundation published a study just Tuesday showing that sexual activity was significantly reduced in 11 of the 15 abstinence programs they reviewed.

*CORRECTION: The paper was not original research on the abstinence programs.  It was, however, a comprehensive assessment of 21 other studies regarding various abstinence programs.

Actress (Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice) and Planned Parenthood board member Kate Walsh appeared on CBS’s “The Early Show” to talk about sex education for teens: “Abstinence is one aspect of sex education, but it is not the complete aspect. And to expect, I think, everybody to remain abstinent is just—it’s like asking them not to grow. It’s like we don’t ask people to not try out for sports.” Thank goodness she just plays a doctor on TV. … See the clip here.

As Congress prepares to take up the question of sex-ed funding, you’ll see lots of articles on sex-ed. Most of them will say abstinence-only education doesn’t work. Here’s one that takes a more evenhanded approach.

HT: krm

The teen birth rate has risen for the first time in 15 years, and the shrill volume of the sex education debate has risen along with it.

Teen births have been steadily decreasing since 1991, but yesterday government statisticians announced that the birth rate went up 3% from 2005 to 2006. Planned Parenthood blames abstinence-based sex education, and the Family Research Council blames contraceptive-based sex education, but other experts say the problem may lie elsewhere.

Bill Albert, deputy director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, told WoW when researchers ask teens what influences their sexual behavior, they put sex education at the bottom of the list. In the Campaign’s most recent report, teens say that parents influence their decisions most — more than friends, religious leaders, siblings, or the media. Only 4% said that teachers or sex educators influenced their decisions, but 64% of teens said they share their parents’ view of sex.

“Sex education is necessary but it is not sufficient,” Albert said. “We have to look at these broader social forces.”

Kay Hymowitz, Manhattan Institute senior fellow and author of Marriage and Caste in America, told WoW that the issue is not primarily sex education but a broader cultural trend toward unmarried childbearing, which rose 8% in 2006 and reached a record high 1.6 million births.

“These young women do not think it is necessary for them to be married before they have children, or for their children to have reliable fathers,” said Hymowitz, adding that women who think this will neither practice abstinence nor use contraceptives consistently. She echoes the warning of other social researchers: “You are going to see more poverty and more inequality the more you see young women having children without being married.”

Hymowitz said until America reaches a cultural consensus on unmarried pregnancy, teens will receive mixed messages: “You can’t ask the schools to take on something the culture at large doesn’t believe.”

Although statistics suggest that half of teenage girls in Washington, DC, will be pregnant at least once, the DC Board of Education is discussing next week the elimination of all abstinence programs from the District’s schools.Activist members from the Local School Restructuring Team (LSRT) are pushing for a Health Education Standard that will ban abstinence education in favor of contraception-based instruction. They have already succeeded in getting Stuart-Hobson Middle School in northeast DC to shut down the school chapter of ULTRA Teen Choice, a character-based, peer-counseling organization that promotes abstinence outside of marriage.

Since November 2006, ULTRA at Stuart-Hobson had been conducting weekly club meetings about such issues as HIV/AIDs, pregnancy prevention, peer pressure, marriage, and self worth. ULTRA had also begun to match students with college-aged mentors committed to abstinence.

The program has no statistics at this point, but its director, Richard Urban, told WoW that many teens have made commitments to abstinence. One participant, seventh-grader Cameron Tate, wrote what he had learned: “If you’re a teenager in school, the baby would distract you while you’re studying. My life is care free.”