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Marcela Howell (202) 419-3420
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July 12, 2007 |
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WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE. . .
Democrats INCREASE Funding for Discredited Abstinence-Only Policy
Statement by James Wagoner
Today, Democrats on the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Service, and Education (LHHS) Committee put their stamp of approval on abstinence-only programs, despite a 10-year federal evaluation of the programs released in April showing that abstinence alone simply does not work. The Democrats increased the spending on the programs by 25% bringing the total to $140 million - more than the highest level of funding granted by the former Republican-controlled Congress.
In one inglorious motion, Democratic leaders sold out the health and well-being of young people, delivered a public slap in the face to evidence-based public health, and made a mockery of their “prevention first” message. Let’s face it, with friends like these, who needs conservative Republicans? Democrats can no longer point the finger at conservative Republicans for supporting this failed policy. With this vote, they have clearly put politics over public health, common sense, and the well-being of young people.
A few weeks ago, Democratic leaders said they were using the abstinence-only funding to help grease the bill’s progress through Congress and the White House. With this strategy, they are sending a message that it’s fine to include really bad ideas in an appropriations bill as long as it moves the legislation forward. That is precisely the kind of thinking that gave us the infamous “bridge to nowhere” boondoggle in the last Congress - the proposal to connect the town of Ketchikan, AK (population 8,900) with its airport on the Island of Gravina (population 50) at a cost to federal taxpayers of $320 million!
Funding for abstinence-only programs may well become the Democrats’ “bridge to nowhere” if they persist in this bad policy. I think voters had something quite different in mind when they bought into Democratic claims of “new leadership.
Right now, the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, and each year America’s teenagers contract an estimated 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections and approximately two young people every hour of every day are infected with HIV. The tragedy of this House vote is not simply the waste of taxpayer dollars, which this clearly is, but it is the damage done to the young people who have been on the receiving end of distorted, inaccurate information about condoms and birth control. Democrats are now officially on record as promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS - that’s not just bad public health policy, it’s also bad ethics and it’s just bad leadership.
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Advocates for Youth is a national, nonprofit organization that creates programs and supports policies that help young people make safe, responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.
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