Write About Now

FOUR of my friends delivered babies this past week. Which explains why I couldn’t get any of them on the phone last June.

All of these friends fit one current trend: each one is in her late 20s or early 30s. Thursday’s USA Today included an article reporting a 2.3% increase in birth rates among women ages 30-34, the largest bump (so to speak) in any age group.

But these friends are all married, which distinguishes them from another growing demographic reported in the article. These stats, from USA Today, Reuters, and The Journal of Adolescent Health, are amazing:

—40% of all births in 2007 were to unmarried mothers.

—23% of these births were to teen girls.

—The birth rate for teen girls rose 5% between 2005 and 2007.

—The US continues to lead the developed world in adolescent pregnancy rates.

—25% of new HIV infections occur among people under age 22.

Clearly, something in our current approach to sex education is not working, and many educators and health professionals believe it’s the recent prioritization of abstinence-only curriculum.

Stay with me. I’m betting most of you believe strongly in abstinence before marriage and the promotion of this idea to impressionable young people. So do I. But after researching the issue I no longer believe it can be the only option offered to our public school students. Here’s why.

Oh, the morality!

Many Christians believe that presenting any birth control method other than 100% abstinence, including information on contraception and prevention of STDs, actually encourages teenagers to experiment sexually. Although the evidence contradicts this (more on that in a moment), they also believe more comprehensive education condones behavior they find immoral.

But we cannot ignore that many teens in our high schools do not share these beliefs about premarital sex. Researchers say as many as 75% of high schoolers have had sex, and Mathematica Policy Research reports more than 20% of high school seniors have had four or more partners by graduation. (The stats on Christian teens aren’t much more encouraging, but we’ll leave that for another time.) The question is not whether these kids plan to become sexually active, but when—and how safe they’ll be.

In light of this reality, other moral issues must be addressed. The Centers for Disease Control report more than nine million new STD infections each year among people ages 15-24.  Failure to educate these students about the best ways to prevent the spread of such diseases—including but not limited to abstinence—could endanger the health and/or lives of those students’ future partners. (Don’t assume teens understand these risks; the Mathematica study suggests abstinence-only education results in “a less clear understanding of STDs and their health consequences.”)

In addition to the many existing lives potentially harmed, we face another moral conundrum when acknowledging the millions of babies born to teenage girls each year. Again, research bears this out: “The children of adolescent mothers perform more poorly on indicators of health and social well-being than children of older mothers. A recent analysis found that declines in adolescent birth rates in the 1990s were significantly responsible for reducing child poverty and single-parent families during the 1990s.”

So our well-intentioned efforts to promote abstinence can actually backfire, causing generations of teens and children to experience health problems, developmental delays, and economic disadvantages. What’s the solution?

When a group of adults goes out drinking, we may condemn their behavior but we acknowledge their right to make this choice. Rather than insisting that everyone abstain from alcohol completely, we accept that some will choose to drink and instead encourage them to avoid causing physical harm to themselves and others by designating a driver or calling a cab.  I’m suggesting we begin thinking about this issue the same way; instead of offering one all or nothing choice—even if only one choice fits our worldview—let’s realize many will choose differently and need options to keep themselves safer. (Protection, if you will.)

What works

Although George Bush approved $167 million in abstinence education funding in 2005 and Palin (ironically) promoted the issue while her own teenage daughter carried baby Tripp, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (during President Clinton’s administration) also increased funding and promotion of abstinence education. Both parties—and again, most educators and health organizations—support abstinence among teenagers.

But as the statistics show, an abstinence-only approach is not resulting in fewer teen pregnancies or less disease. A five-year study of 11 such programs “showed few short-term benefits and no lasting, positive impact. A few programs showed mild success at improving attitudes and intentions to abstain. No program was able to demonstrate a positive impact on sexual behavior over time.”

Similarly, the Journal results offer “no scientific evidence that abstinence-only programs demonstrate efficacy in delaying initiation of sexual intercourse.” What these studies do show is that sex ed promoting abstinence along with information on contraception, STDs, HIV/AIDS, etc. does delay teens’ sexual experimentation.

That’s right—we may actually achieve the goal of more teens remaining abstinent for more years by giving them all the information. Amazing.

What really works

For all this talk of education, parents still have the most influence on the sexual behavior of their teenagers. In response to the new stats published Thursday, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy released the results of a public opinion survey in which “teens say parents most influence their decisions about sex—more than friends, the media, teachers and sex educators, and others.”

Ultimately progress on this issue, as with so many others, comes back to healthy families and on-task parents—all the more reason thousands of new parents shouldn’t be babies themselves.