Abstinence-only programs retain support despite questions about effectiveness

More than 700 federally funded programs use an abstinence-only approach, which encourages youths to abstain from sexual intercourse and related activities outside of marriage.

The federal abstinence-only program became a political football of sorts last month when the congressional appropriations subcommittees on education voted to increase funding from this year’s appropriation of $109 million.

House Democrats hope that line item will appease President Bush and more conservative members and give them political leverage to pass some of their social program priorities. It’s unlikely, though, that Congress will reauthorize the program, which also expired in June.

“There is no other way to describe this concession but as shameful,” said William Smith, vice president for public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), in a written statement. The Democrats, he added, “are now delivering up cash directly to the most extreme elements of America’s right-wing movement.”   

Congress has spent nearly $1 billion on abstinence-only grants since the program’s inception as part of the welfare reform law in 1996. The law mandated a longitudinal, broad-based study of the effectiveness of those programs.

In April, Mathematica Policy Research released findings from that decade-long study that tracked students who participated in abstinence-only courses in schools in Mississippi, Florida, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

It found that students who took the courses in fifth grade or middle school were no less likely to engage in sexual intercourse than a control group of their peers once they reached high school.

“This is a ‘no good news, no bad news’ story,” said lead researcher Christopher Trenholm. “If you look at outcomes, such as sexual abstinence and the number of partners, there are no differences, and there are no differences in the rates of unprotected sex.”

The study is seen as the most definitive research to date on the long-term effectiveness of abstinence-only programs. “This evaluation was very high quality, and obviously the results were not positive at all,” said Bill Albert, the deputy director for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. “If you are a person controlling public money and you ask yourself, ‘where is the evidence of programs that have been successful in delaying teen pregnancy?’ you can’t look to abstinence-only programs for encouragement.”

Brenda Z. Greene, NSBA’s director of school health programs, said members of Congress were wise to set aside funds in 1996 for a broad-based, long-term study that will ultimately give board members and district administrators more information to better design their programs.

However, despite Mathematica’s reputation as an independent research group that frequently conducts studies for Congress, the report’s findings have been subjected to political scrutiny and criticism. “Evaluations don’t always give everyone the answers they expect or want,” Greene said.

A new report on comprehensive sex education programs by the Department of Health and Human Services, commissioned by Republicans Tom Coburn, a senator from Oklahoma, and Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, was blasted by SIECUS and several other groups because they said the findings had been politicized.

The report found that some programs promoting condom use in comprehensive sex education classes contained inaccurate and unbalanced information.

Despite the Mathematica study, a number of conservative groups and the National Abstinence Education Association, a coalition of conservative-leaning groups and individuals that was formed last year, insist that schools should focus on abstinence-only programs. They cite parent surveys and rising rates of sexually transmitted diseases as evidence of the need.

Further, some say the Mathematica study only proves that such efforts must be sustained into the high school years.

Trenholm noted that the four abstinence-only programs were chosen for review in the late 1990s because they appeared to be the best managed and most substantive available at the time.

The programs were considered intensive, but they ranged from mandatory daily classes within a school day to after-school electives. Three of the programs were designed for middle school students, and one was created for fifth graders.

In a follow-up study a year after the programs were administered, the students who had taken the courses did seem to be more inclined to follow a path of abstinence than their peers in the control group, who had not taken any classes.

But once they reached their teen years, the main indicator of whether or not a student engaged in sexual activities appeared to be the attitudes of the youths’ friends and peer groups, Trenholm said.

Christine Kim, a policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., said research by Heritage and other conservative groups has shown that abstinence-based programs can help teach personal responsibility, including skills about decision making, future planning, and deferred gratification.

Creating effective programs will continue to be a challenge for school officials, Albert added, because parents and the public at large generally want schools to encourage teens to abstain from sex. He recommends that abstinence should still be taught as part of a comprehensive sex education program.

Greene advised school officials to look at local data on sexual activity, available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and analyze their community’s needs to determine the best sex education programs.