Sex Education Week of Action Urges Solutions to Poor Sexual Health in the South

This week, the Ms. Foundation for Women is joining a diverse group of 20 organizations across 10 states in the U.S. South urgently calling for age-appropriate, medically accurate, evidence-based or evidence-informed sexual health education.

These organizations, brought together by the Ms. Foundation since 2010 through a series of in-person and telephone gatherings, are mobilizing in communities throughout the region to conduct local activities and events—from meeting with legislators and school board members to hosting press conferences and events that showcase the stories of young people—to raise awareness about poor sexual health in the South and advocate for change.

Among the highlights:
• The ACLU of Mississippi, in collaboration with state partners, is hosting gatherings with teen girls to discuss how the absence of comprehensive sex education has impacted their communities. The groups will write letters to the state superintendent and local school board members.
• The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina is hosting a two-day retreat called “Your Story is Your Strength: Turning Teen Parenthood into Power” in which teen mothers from across the state participate in workshop discussions and a media training.

A report just released by Auburn University at Montgomery’s Center for Demographic Research, “Sexual Health of Young People in the U.S. South: Challenges and Opportunities,” underscores the critical need for improved sexual health education in the Southern region.

Key findings include:
• The South’s sexual health profile ranks below that of every other region in the U.S.
• The teenage birth rate is higher in the South than anywhere else in the country.
• The teenage rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea are higher in the South than in other regions in the nation.
• Poor sexual health among teenagers has real costs in terms of public funds. For example, in 2008 an estimated $2.3 billion from federal, state and local governments was spent on teenage childbearing-related expenses in the South.

The report, commissioned by the Ms. Foundation for Women, also highlights opportunities decision-makers have to improve the sexual health of teenagers in the U.S. South, including new federal grant programs for adolescent sexual health and teen pregnancy prevention, which provide funding for the implementation of evidence-based and evidence-informed programs that teach young people how to delay sexual activity and avoid risky sexual behaviors.

Among other topics, these approaches include information about abstinence but also teach information on healthy relationships, contraception and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. The report also found that nearly 90 percent of people in the U.S. South favor the teaching of sex education (covering a range of topics) in public schools.

Photo (c) Elizabeth Rappaport & the Ms. Foundation for Women

Sex-Ed Debate Picks Up: Teen Pregnancy Climbs, Abstinence Advocates Mistake New Study as Proof

Two newly released studies have added fuel to the debate about our nation’s approach to sexuality education and reducing unintended teen pregnancy: one by the Guttmacher Institute, which reported an increase in teen pregnancy in the U.S. -- the reversal of a long-term decline -- and the other about an abstinence-only curriculum that was shown to delay sexual activity in very young adolescents.

Guttmacher reports that after teen-pregnancy rates began declining in 1990 (due to better use of contraceptives), the trend reversed in 2006 -- not surprisingly, at the depths of the Bush presidency. In fact, says Guttmacher, the decline had already begun to “stall out in the early 2000s, at the same time that sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence -- and prohibited by law from discussing the benefits of contraception -- became increasingly widespread.”

Advocates for medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education received the new data as further evidence that abstinence-only programs don’t work. Yet, within a few days, another report was released suggesting that they can. The study, led by Dr. John Jemmott of the University of Pennsylvania, focused on a small group of preteens (average age 12) and demonstrated that a very particular kind of abstinence curriculum helped delay sexual activity for up to 24 months.

Abstinence-only advocates rejoiced, proclaiming the Jemmott study as proof that their approach was correct all along. But what they fail to acknowledge -- and what the press has failed to sufficiently report -- is that the program studied does not at all mirror the abstinence-only programs that received federal funding from the Bush Administration. For starters, the program doesn't even exist yet in schools. Second, instead of an abstinence-only-until-marriage program, the goal of the experimental one was to help young people avoid sex until they were "ready." Finally, the training and curriculum manual, in Jemmott's own words, "explicitly instructed the facilitators not to disparage the efficacy of condoms or allow the view that condoms are ineffective to go uncorrected" -- a significant departure from Bush-funded programs which often disparaged, prohibited, and/or delivered inaccurate information about contraception. The bottom line: the Jemmott study does not provide data to support the failed Bush-era abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

Read Ms. Foundation grantee Advocates for Youth response to the Jemmott study.
Read the Guttmacher report [PDF].
Read the Jemmott study.
Read a related post: Abstinence from Federal Sex-Ed Funding?

Senate to Consider Extending Abstinence-Only Funding in Medicare Bill

Two of the Ms. Foundation's national Sexuality Education Advocacy Initiative grantees are calling on voters to oppose an 18-month extension of the Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage program included in the Medicare package prepared by the Senate Finance Committee.

The grantees, Advocates for Youth and Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SEICUS), joined the Ms. Foundation and many other organizations in signing a letter to Max Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The letter objects to continued funding of abstinence-only programs and their inclusion in a Medicare bill. It notes:

The Senate Medicare package extends these programs despite the mounting scientific and medical evidence indicating that abstinence-only-until-marriage funding is a poor public investment.

It is extremely noteworthy that at least 17 states have firmly rejected federal funding through Title V of the Social Security Act. Acting on principle and in the best interest of their youth, these governors have rebuffed a source of much needed revenue after concluding that these unduly restrictive and ideologically-driven programs were, at a minimum, ineffective and, at worst, harmful.

An eight-year, congressionally mandated evaluation published by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. in April 2007 shows that abstinence-only programs have no beneficial impact. Students who participated in a range of curricula funded through the federal Title V abstinence-only program were no more likely than non-recipients to delay sexual initiation, to have fewer partners, or to use condoms when they did become sexually active. [Report Executive Summary – PDF]

A November 2007 report by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy confirmed these findings, concluding that "[a]t present, there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence, or reduces the number of sexual partners," and therefore there isn't "sufficient evidence to justify their widespread dissemination." [Report]

To find out more about how to promote comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education, visit Advocates for Youth and SEICUS. To send an email with your opposition to the extension of abstinence-only funding in the Medicare bill, you can join this effort organized by Advocates for Youth.