Making The Case for Abstinence

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

AMID ALL THE ANGUISH, CONFUSION AND MIXED SIGNALS SURrounding teenage sexuality, the simplicity of one group's message is striking: sex outside marriage is just plain wrong. To instruct children in the mechanics of birth control or abortion, it argues, is to lead them down the path of self- destruction. That's the philosophy of the abstinence-only movement, a coalition of conservative parents, teachers and religious groups that, in the absence of any national sex-education consensus, has been remarkably successful in having its approach adopted as the official curriculum in schools across the U.S.

But is it the best approach? Its adherents claim the message is both morally correct and demonstrably effective. Opponents argue that in an age in which most teenagers are already sexually active, preaching the case for chastity without teaching the case for condoms is dangerously naive. "All the parents I know are absolutely in favor of abstinence," says Carole Chervin, senior staff attorney for the Planned Parenthood Federation. "It's the abstinence only approach that's bothersome. We believe sex education should be comprehensive."

The fight has moved into the courts. In what could become a landmark case, Planned Parenthood of Northeast Florida and 21 citizens in Duval County, Florida, have sued the local school board for rejecting a broad-based sex- education curriculum developed by the board's staff in favor of a controversial abstinence-only program from Teen-Aid, Inc. of Spokane, Washington. Planned Parenthood complains that the material in the text is biased, sensationalist and, at times, misleading. Some school-board members argue that the real issue is whether the local community has the right to choose the sex-education curriculum it wants, however flawed.

Late last week a similar case in Shreveport, Louisiana, went against the abstinence-only movement when a district judge ruled that a prochastity text called "Sex Respect" was biased and inaccurate and ordered it pulled from the Caddo Parish junior high schools. The court is scheduled to rule this week on the fate of the abstinence-only text still being used in the high schools.

Abstinence is hardly a new idea, but the organized abstinence-only movement dates back to a Reagan-era program that set aside $2 million a year for the development of classroom materials to teach adolescents to say no to sex. Today there are more than a dozen competing curriculums on the market, each offering lesson plans, activities and workbook exercises designed to encourage abstinence among teenagers.

"Sex Respect," developed by Project Respect in Golf, Illinois, is one of the most widely used, having been adopted by a couple of thousand schools nationwide. Class activities include listing ways humans are different from animals, making bumper stickers that read CONTROL YOUR URGIN'/ BE A VIRGIN, and answering multiple-choice test questions about what kinds of situations put pressure on teens to have sex. The teacher's manual features a section on sexual messages in the media, a list of suggested alternatives to sex when on dates (bicycling, dinner parties, playing Monopoly) and a chapter on "secondary virginity" -- the decision to stop having sex until marriage, even after one is sexually experienced.

Missing from the Sex Respect curriculum is the standard discussion of the comparative effectiveness of various birth-control methods found in most sex- education courses. Furthermore, it fails to offer any follow-up programs, outside counseling or guidance for teens who might become pregnant or contract a sexually transmitted disease. Kathleen Sullivan, director of Project Respect, defends her program: "We give the students a ton of information," she says. "We point out, for example, the tremendous failure rate of condoms."

One argument put forward for abstinence-only programs is that they work. Sullivan cites a study conducted by Project Respect showing that pregnancy rates among students who have taken the course are 45% lower than among those who have not. But critics say none of these studies have been reviewed by outside scientists and wonder whether any will bear close scrutiny. The San Diego Union looked into one of the most widely reported success stories -- that the Teen-Aid program lowered the rate of pregnancy at a San Marcos, California, high school from 147 to only 20 in two years -- and reported that while the 147 figure was well documented, the number 20 had apparently been made up.

The argument most often used against abstinence-only programs is that they are a thinly disguised effort to impose fundamentalist religious values on public-school students and thus violate the constitutional separation of church and state. Some of the texts started out as religious documents and were rewritten to replace references to God and Jesus with nonsectarian words like goodness and decency. Still, it makes little sense to criticize the programs simply because they originate from a religious perspective; what matters is not where the courses came from but what they say.

That's the real issue with the Teen-Aid text at the center of the Florida lawsuit. In making the case for chastity, Teen-Aid has asserted, among other things, that "the only way to avoid pregnancy is to abstain from genital contact" and that the "correct use of condoms does not prevent HIV infection but only delays it." Most teens don't need a school course to know that neither of those statements is correct. How are they going to believe in abstinence if those who preach don't have their facts straight?

With reporting by Lisa H. Towle/Raleigh