"Just Don't Do It"

A Call To Action

December 3, 2004
Study Faults Abstinence Courses
By BRIAN WINGFIELD

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - Some federally financed sex education programs that teach an abstinence-only approach have factual errors and are ineffective, a Congressional report says.

The report, by the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee for Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, says the programs provide "false, misleading or distorted information" about contraception, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual stereotypes.

The report says some of programs erroneously teach, among other points, that condoms fail to prevent H.I.V. in heterosexual sex 31 percent of the time and that touching another person's genitals may result in pregnancy.

The study, first reported on Wednesday by ABC News, says some of the programs stereotype men and women without any scientific basis. One course says women need "financial support" and men crave "admiration." Another course says a human being has 24 chromosomes from the father and 24 from the mother. The number is 23.

Dr. Alma L. Golden, a deputy assistant secretary in the Health and Human Services Department, said in a statement that Mr. Waxman's report "misses the boat" and that it took information out of context "for purely political reasons."

The investigators reviewed 13 programs in schools, hospitals, religious groups and health departments in 25 states. Eleven courses, the study said, had "major errors and distortions of public health information." The teaching materials "are not reviewed for accuracy by the federal government," the report adds.

The errors, it says, "may help explain why these programs have not been shown to protect adolescents from sexually transmitted diseases and why youth who pledge abstinence are significantly less likely to make informed choices about precautions when they do have sex."

The Bush administration has been a strong advocate of abstinence-only education. According to the report, the federal government plans to spend $170 million on such programs next year, more than twice as much as in 2001.

Linda Klepacki of Focus on the Family, an evangelical group that supports abstinence programs, said Mr. Waxman was "trying to eliminate funding for abstinence-only education within the public school system."

copyright NYTIMES.COM