New study on ‘abstinence-only’ bound to inject controversy into sex education debate

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When I was a kid in the Chicago Public Schools, we had a pretty straight-forward and honest sex ed program that made sure we understood that if you tap it, you better wrap it. There were not many teen pregnancies in my high school, although I also attended the best high school in the city of Chicago (same as Michelle Obama – Dolphin Pride!), so our population of students can’t really be held up as fully representative in terms of income and achievement levels as other city students. Nevertheless, this experience has always made me suspicious of the very notion of ‘abstinence-only.’ As that cheesy song in the early 90s explained, “People are still having sex!”

Now a purportedly well-designed study published by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, led by one John B. Jemmott III, hypothesizes that there might be more benefit to the use of abstinence-only education than critics have alleged. Money shot from the Washington Post:

The new study involved 662 African-American students who were randomly assigned to go through one of five programs: An eight-hour curriculum that encouraged them to delay having sex; an eight-hour program focused on teaching safe sex; an eight- or 12-hour program that did both; or an eight-hour program focused on teaching the youngsters other ways to be healthy, such as eating well and exercising.

Over the next two years, about 33 percent of the students who went through the abstinence program started having sex, compared to about 52 percent who were just taught safe sex. About 42 percent of the students who went through the comprehensive program started having sex, and about 47 percent of those who just learned about other ways to be healthy. The abstinence program had no negative effects on condom use, which has been a major criticism of the abstinence approach.

“The take-home message is that we need a variety of interventions to address an epidemic like HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy,” Jemmott said. “There are populations that really want an abstinence intervention. They are against telling children about condoms. This study suggests abstinence programs can be part of the mix of programs that we offer.”

via Study finds focus on abstinence in sex-ed classes can delay sexual activity.

Critics of the study’s findings argue that it doesn’t disprove a key claim they made – that the biggest problem with the Bush administration’s abstinence-only programs was its focus on ‘abstinence until marriage’ rather than ‘abstinence until you’re ready.’ How long do you want to bet it will take for some conservative culture warrior to misrepresent the study’s findings as proving that the ‘abstinence until marriage’ message works?

That said, I’d have some additional questions about the study’s findings:

1. Of the 33% who started having sex under the abstinence-only instruction, how many had protected sex? How many became pregnant, or contracted an STD? Is the rate significantly different from those who were educated under the comprehensive and safe sex-only messages? [Update: As I note in a follow-up blog post, the question is partially answered in the study.]

2. The objective of the abstinence program was the delay of the beginning of sexual activity – does that delay persist relative to the safe-sex and comprehensive programs, or does it break down at some point and catch up to the rates of sexual activity observed in the group who delayed under the other two programs?

3. What are the actual benefits outside of moral and spiritual concerns of delaying the beginning of sexual activity? At what point do these benefits have diminishing returns? That is, at what point does delaying the onset of sexual activity become irrelevant in terms of the social good it produces (relative to the private, moral good of say, abiding by some faith’s edicts)?

If the rates of protected sex/lack of pregnancy and STDs is comparable under the three programs, I’m amenable to focus on teaching ‘delay’ at certain ages. But once you get past a certain age, some kids are just going to become sexually active, while others will continue to run screaming from s-e-x into young adulthood – I’ve found this to be true wherever in the country I’ve lived.

Ultimately, it’s important to keep in mind that some forces in this country behind the abstinence-only approach have an outright opposition to women and men who are not married being able to access methods for planning their reproductive health at any age. Does anyone else remember the folks calling for the continual teaching of abstinence until marriage into young adulthood a couple of years ago? It’s those forces that I think will twist this study’s findings in the wrong way, when it really raises as many questions as it answers.