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July 2, 2003
Advocates
for Youth Calls HHS' Continued Support of Unproven and Ineffective
Programs Irresponsible
Statement of James Wagoner,
President, Advocates for Youth:
The Department of Health and Human
Services today announced 28 new grants
in excess of $15 million to fund abstinence-only-until-marriage
programs—programs
that censor young people's access to information about the health benefits
of contraception.
"Once again the conservative powers in our government have pushed proven
public health strategies aside in order to advance an ideological agenda. And
now even more taxpayer money is being poured into completely unproven programs.
The research in this area is very clear: comprehensive sex education—education
that includes information about both abstinence and contraception—has
been proven effective in research spanning the past two decades, while abstinence-only-until-marriage
programs have yet to be found effective."
"Advocates for Youth recently released a report, Science
and Success: Sex Education and Other Programs That Work to Prevent Teen Pregnancy,
HIV & Sexually Transmitted Infections, that lists sixteen sex education
programs and three youth development initiatives that have been proven to delay
sexual initiation and to reduce teen pregnancies and the threat of STDs. But
because these sex education programs provide information about both abstinence and contraception,
none are eligible for funding through the federal government's abstinence-only
program.
"If abstinence-only-until-marriage education is intended 'to reduce the
number of teens who have premarital sex,' as HRSA Administrator Elizabeth M.
Duke claims in today's HHS press release, then one can only wonder why the government
is funding programs that have not been proven to work and ignoring those that
have been shown to work."
"Comprehensive sex education has been endorsed by over 100 leading scientific
organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical
Association, and the Institute of Medicine—the latter of which stated that
abstinence-only-until-marriage programs represented 'poor fiscal and public health
policy'."
"The most recent support for comprehensive sex education came from none
other than the new Surgeon General, Dr. Richard Carmona, appointed by President
Bush. In an interview with the Associated Press, Dr. Carmona stated that sex
education programs should include discussion of condoms and other forms of birth
control, adding his voice to former surgeons general dating as far back as President
Reagan's administration, each of whom voiced support for a comprehensive approach
to sex education."
"Helping young people abstain from sex is an important goal. It is also
an achievable goal if money is invested in proven strategies. Given the country's
economic climate, we should be investing our scarce resources in successful strategies,
not wasting them on unproven programs driven by ideology."
For
more information contact: Bill Barker/202.419.3420
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