freak dancing.jpgBrent Bozell’s June 7 column, “Nightmare on Prom Street,” in Townhall.com, takes wimpy educators to task for letting teens bump and grind their way through prom dances.
Meanwhile, Janet Crouse reported in Townhall.com, June 6:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just released its 2007 report “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance”….
The good news is that fewer teens engage in risky behavior. The bad news is that far too many of them still do!…

The important information is that during the period from 1991 to 2007, teen sexual activity dropped, teen pregnancies declined and abortions declined. All of these positive developments coincide with the increased prevalence and greater sophistication of abstinence programs. No wonder the comprehensive sex education establishment is looking for opportunities to debunk their effectiveness.
Predictably, the relatively stable lines from 2003-2007 in students who have ever had sexual intercourse and students who are sexually active, as well as the slight decline in condom use, though not statistically significant, is being used by the comprehensive sex education establishment to blame abstinence programs….
Instead of abandoning Title V (which is funded at far less — $1 for abstinence programs to every $12 for comprehensive sex education), we need to expand our commitment to the effort and broaden the distribution of abstinence programs to more schools.
The bottom line is that since 1991 the number of female high school students that have ever had sexual intercourse has dropped, the number that are sexually active has dropped, the number with multiple sex partners has dropped, and fewer girls are having first sexual intercourse before age 13.
When comprehensive sex education was the only approach available to students, all the risky sex activity trends were moving in the wrong direction. Now they are improving or, at least, holding steady. But we must work to see that those trends continue to improve so that our teenagers will have a bright and hopeful future.
Who could possibly want to risk seeing sexual activity trends go back to where they were when comprehensive sex education had a monopoly? Who would want to cut off funding for abstinence programs before they have a chance to influence teens toward better decision making across the whole nation?

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The answer is, sadly, that those who are promoting the comprehensive sex education programs that have proven so ineffective over such a long period of time are those who are benefiting financially from the federal troughs.
The organization that probably benefits most from federally funded comprehensive sex education programs, Planned Parenthood, gets almost $340 million from the government every year (though their funds come from Title X, they are one of the most influential lobbying groups for a monopoly for comprehensive sex education) even though their profits have more than doubled since 2003 to a record $112 million “excess of revenue over expenses” last year.
The answer for getting the trend lines on sexual activity to resume their progress is for teens to learn that they — with the skills, values and habits that they learn from abstinence programs — can control their destiny. When they internalize solid values, learn self-control, develop hope for the future, and put into practice the habits that they want to establish, they will be able to achieve their goals and avoid getting side-tracked into too-early sexual activity that lures them off the path toward future success.

[HT: proofreader Angela]

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