My thirteen-year-old daughter recently completed a half-semester-long health class, a required course at the middle school she attends. Sex education was a key component of the curriculum. The teacher, an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is woman, pulled no punches. The kids learned about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and had frank discussions centered around the realities of what it means to be a teenager struggling with incipient sexuality, personal values, identity, relationships, assertiveness, responsibility, and more. Thinking back to my own school days, I was in awe. And I was grateful that I live in a school district and community that doesn’t require teachers to limit their sex ed teaching to “just say no.”

Not all teens are as fortunate. In 1996 Congress passed legislation that effectively censored comprehensive sex education programs. If a program included information about contraception, it would have to forfeit federal funding. Abstinence was the only message to be conveyed, lack of scientific research notwithstanding.

Study after study, however, has concluded that abstinence-only programs do nothing to delay or prevent sexual activity, pregnancy, or the transmission of STDs. As a result, over 1.5 billion state and federal dollars have been squandered since 1998 on programs that are ineffective and unhelpful at best and dangerous at worst; programs often based on myth, misinformation, distortion, and stereotyping.

The latest study to shatter the myth of ultra-conservative ideologues who push abstinence-only curriculums was recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The study compared the sexual health risks of three groups of teens: those who received abstinence-only education, those who received comprehensive sex education, and those who received no formal sex education at all. Researchers found that teens who received comprehensive sex education were the least likely to report teen pregnancy. Furthermore, contrary to many who claim that sex education promotes sexual behavior, the study found that teaching teens about contraception led to neither increased sexual activity nor STDs.

So what does work? A comprehensive approach that teaches abstinence and contraception. All teenagers, and not just heterosexual ones, deserve accurate, uncensored, pragmatic, and nonjudgmental information so they can assess for themselves the risks and responsibilities of sexual choices.

No one, to my knowledge, is arguing against abstinence as the safest way for teens to avoid pregnancy, STDs, and risky sexual behavior. But in a country that has one of the highest teen birth rates among all developed countries, it’s time to replace ignorance with education. To do otherwise is to do this and future generations a great disservice.

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Advocates for Youth