ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH

FY 06 Budget: Cuts for Vital Health and Social Programs, Increases for Unproven, Factually Inaccurate Abstinence-Only Programs

Statement from James Wagoner, President, Advocates for Youth

In the context of a budget that slashes spending for essential programs, from heating for seniors to bioterrorism prevention, the $38 million increase for unproven abstinence-only-until-marriage programs is dumbfounding. The decision is even more difficult to defend, given recent reports that curricula used by a majority of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs provide false and misleading information. Additional funding proposed in the President's new budget would bring the total allocated for these programs to $205.5 million in 2006, an increase of more than 50 percent since 2004.

Fully five years after the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the nation's leading scientific body, called for the elimination of federal and state funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs because there is no credible evidence of effectiveness, Congress has already pushed total funding for these programs over the billion dollar mark. Far from allocating another cent to these unproven efforts, Congress should launch a full investigation into how the false and inaccurate information contained in the curricula has impacted adolescents' knowledge and attitudes.

How many young people who have taken these programs now think that HIV is spread through tears and saliva? How many more believe that chlamydia causes heart disease?

State evaluations, including the most recent from the President's home state of Texas, already show these programs don't work to delay sexual initiation. That's one reason to stop funding them.

Shouldn't we be cutting programs that have no proven effectiveness?

At the very least, the federal government should be in the business of providing medically accurate information to the youth of this country.

Again, the IOM has cited abstinence-only-until-marriage programs as examples of "poor fiscal and public health policy," and, in addition, the nation's most trusted medical organizations, such as the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Society for Adolescent Medicine (SAM), all support comprehensive sex education—an approach that includes strong messages of both abstinence and contraception. Every Surgeon General since C. Everett Koop has recommended this approach as well.

It's time to get real and quit allowing ideology to trump public health science.

###

Advocates for Youth is an national, nonprofit organization that creates programs and supports policies that help young people make safe, responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.

Note to Editors and Producers: For more information or to set up an interview with adolescent sexuality experts, please contact Bill Barker at (202) 419-3420.

RETURN TO INDEX OF PRESS RELEASES >>