Abstinence Only: Shelby Knox Gets to Heart of Souder "Affair"

You may by now have heard the scuttlebutt surrounding Representative Mark Souder’s (R - IN) resignation from office (you know: the increasingly common tale of a politician being caught in an affair after years of preaching “family values” to a conservative base). But what you may not have seen yet is Shelby Knox’s fantastic piece, which highlights how dangerous support for the abstinence-only approach lauded by Souder has been for millions of school children around the country.

Leaving somewhat to the side Souder’s hypocrisy in promoting sex-inside-marriage as the “only way” to prevent pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, while actually engaging in sex outside of his own marriage, Knox focuses her critique on the real world impact of these policies on America’s youth. On the Women’s Media Center site, she writes,

What I really want to know is what Rep. Souder and others like him have to say to the millions of young people whose health was endangered by being told condoms don’t work, or that we’re worth less as human beings depending on who we have sex with and when. What I want to know is how in good conscience adults – who knew by the simple benefit of life experience it was a lie – could pretend that sex and sexual relationships are always uncomplicated as long as they’re kept inside the safe confines of marriage?

Seeing folks like Souder hoisted on their own petards may bring a certain satisfaction – but remembering how many lives have literally been put at risk because of policies like these is sobering indeed. And while you may have thought with a new president we'd be able to right this wrong and focus solely on evidence-based alternatives, not so fast: these failed policies will continue to threaten youth nationwide. Last summer, the Obama Administration did allow federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs to lapse, but this year's health-care reform legislation brought support for them right back.

Navigating this complex and politically charged environment, our grantees, including California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and New Mexicans for Responsible Sexuality Education and many others, continue to work hard in states and school districts across the country to build a future where all youth have access to comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education; despite what Rep. Souder and his cohort would tell you, it’s the least they deserve.

Health Care Reform Revives Funding for Failed Abstinence-Only Approach

Federal funding for abortion, as we well know, has been front and center in the health-care debate. But what has received far less attention is the revival of federal funding for Bush-era abstinence-only-until-marriage programs (yep, the ones that prohibit any discussion of the benefits of contraception) in the final health-care bill. We find this incredibly hard to believe. After celebrating a long-fought, hard-won victory last year when President Obama let federal funding for the failed abstinence-only approach lapse, we join our grantees and other activists who are shocked and dismayed that such a discredited program is yet again alive.

Still, it is true: the final health-care reform bill includes funding – to the tune of $50 million a year – for the abstinence-only-until-marriage initiative, Title V. This reinstatement flies in the face of evidence – including a study commissioned by the federal government – that these programs are not only unsuccessful, but harmful. Evidence that Congress, says Joseph DiNorcia, Jr., president and CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), a Ms. Foundation grantee partner, is well aware of:

[Congress has] the facts. They know that this program is harmful to young people, uses federal dollars to spread misinformation, fear, and shame, and is a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars. Who decided it was a good idea to forgo saving a quarter-of-a-billion dollars over the next five years and continue funding for a failed program that leaves young people at risk? Why this program is being brought back from the dead is a mystery.

Whatever the impetus, this is a frustrating setback for advocates of medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education who for years worked tirelessly to convince state after state to reject abstinence-only-until-marriage funding. Now advocates will be forced – yet again – to resort to this approach. In the words of James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, also a Ms. Foundation grantee partner: “Together, we now have even more to do. We need to convince every governor in America to reject the bad funding for Title V programs and accept the good funding for evidence-based, comprehensive programs.”

It is also true that the health-care bill provides $75 million per year over five years for a new evidence-based “personal responsibility education program,” [see this analysis by the Guttmacher Institute] intended to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. But the implications of the nonsensical abstinence-only backtrack cannot be ignored: forced to resurrect their strategy to convince states to refuse abstinence-only funding, advocates will likely have to divert resources from the implementation of evidence-based, comprehensive sexuality education – district by district, school by school – which still, for all intents and purposes, remains a monumental task.