And the Washington Post joins in the hysteria. Where does the report, "Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says" go? Yep. A1. This is front page material folks.
Sez WP:
Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since the efforts began in 1999. Waxman's staff reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula -- those used by at least five programs apiece.
The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact.
I can't fact-check the congressional report (pdf document), since the curricula reviewed in the report apparently are not online. But the report itself raises some eyebrows as to its own conclusions on its own terms.
Let's go for the red meat/easy stuff: religion and science.
The report makes the following assertions:
By their nature, abstinence-only curricula teach moral judgments alongside scientific facts. The SPRANS [Special Programs of Regional and National Significance Community-Based Abstinence Education] program mandates, for example, that programs teach that having sex only within marriage “is the expected standard of human sexual activity.”
Let's see, now. Pretty much every human culture everywhere throughout human history has put forth a definition of marriage, and regulated sexual activity in terms of that definition. Yes, there were cult prostitutes. Yes, men had their mistresses and women their cabana boys. But the standard was marriage. So the abstinence curricula are only keeping in tune with all of human history and culture. Yep. That's pretty radical. Better shut 'em down.
But it's not just normative morals, really. It's religion that bugs Waxman and the committee.
In some of the curricula, the moral judgments are explicitly religious. For example, in a newsletter accompanying one popular curriculum, the author laments that as a result of societal change, “No longer were we valued as spiritual beings made by a loving Creator.” The curriculum’s author closes the section by signing, “In His Service.”
How sinister. But remember, under these faith-based initiatives, the criteria is not the use of religious dogma per se, but that these initiatives provide services that are fundamentally useful and productive for society.
Oh, well, we still shouldn't mix science and morals, after all. Least-wise, not when it comes to stating when life begins.
In other curricula, moral judgments are misleadingly offered as scientific fact.
Although religions and moral codes offer different answers to the question of when life begins, some abstinence-only curricula present specific religious views on this question as scientific fact. One curriculum teaches: “Conception, also known as fertilization, occurs when one sperm unites with one egg in the upper third of the fallopian tube. This is when life begins.” Another states: “Fertilization (or conception) occurs when one of the father’s sperm unites with the mother’s ovum (egg). At this instant a new human life is formed.”
A related question, also answered differently by people of differing beliefs, is whether a developing fetus is a person. Several curricula offer as scientific fact moral or religious definitions of early fetuses as babies or people, in the process supplying inaccurate descriptions of their developmental state.
One curriculum that describes fetuses as “babies” describes the blastocyst, technically a ball of 107 to 256 cells at the beginning of uterine implantation, as “snuggling” into the uterus:
After conception, the tiny baby moves down the fallopian tube toward the mother’s uterus. About the sixth to tenth day after conception, when the baby is no bigger than this dot (.), baby snuggles into the soft nest in the lining of the mother’s uterus.
See, it's only scientific if you say the embryo, blastocyst, fetus-thingey isn't a human being. Because, you well realize I'm sure that if science can't say the mass-of-cells-created-by-human-sexual-intercourse-containing-all-human-genes-and-will-otherwise-develop-into-a -human-being-thingamabob is a person, then, well, it logically must not be a person. . . . Right?
Um, that would be "No," Henry. If science can't say it's a person, then science can't say it's not a person, either. That's logic. So it's unscientific, strictly speaking, to say either that the [insert favorite term to describe the unborn human being here] is a person and similarly is not a person.
Or, to be as absolutely straightforward and clear: Science has nothing to say. It remains for moral and religious views to do what science is absolutely incapable of doing: saying that this is a human person.
Oh, well, you tried to exclude religion and morals. "A" for effort.
But back to WP:
When used properly and consistently, condoms fail to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) less than 3 percent of the time, federal researchers say, and it is not known how many gay teenagers are HIV-positive. The assertion regarding gay teenagers [i. e., "that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus"] may be a misinterpretation of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that 59 percent of HIV-infected males ages 13 to 19 contracted the virus through homosexual relations.
Hmmm. Seems the WP would fail the Waxman standard, since they present misleading information. I mean, reading that first sentence, you would think that condoms are pretty dadgum effective, right? Oh, but there's the "when used properly and consistently" phrase. So, then, according to a World Health Organization pamphlet cited in the congressional report:
The most frequently cited condom effectiveness rate is for typical use, which includes perfect and imperfect use (i.e. not used at every act of intercourse, or used incorrectly). The pregnancy rate during typical use can be much higher (10-14%) than for perfect use, but this is due primarily to inconsistent and incorrect use, not to condom failure. Condom failure – the device breaking or slipping off completely during intercourse – is uncommon.
In other words, don't sue the condom manufacturers for getting your partner pregnant. (Hey! Isn't that argument good for guns and gun violence, too, Henry? But I digress.)
So, in a perfect world, condoms work pretty darn good. But in the world of hormone-crazed teens, who, one must note, are going to do it anyway, in the darkened backseat of a car, condoms aren't really all the great. Gotcha.
Those damn, misleading abstinence-only dorks! Shame on them for misleading teens into thinking that not having sex will actually keep you from getting pregnant.
So let's recap. According to Waxman & Co., abstinence-only education is bad, because it presents "lies, damned lies" about condom use, STDs, and so forth. But tell me again: If you don't have sex, isn't it the case that you won't get pregnant? Yeah. I thought so.
So, while it's not good for these groups to distort the facts--even if unintentionally and for good ends--ultimately their main program they propose (don't have sex and you won't get pregnant) is dead on. Abstinence works. 100% of the time. Always. With everyone.
Sounds like damn fine odds to me.
Waxman & Co., however, even when they're right and honest (even if attempting to use a condom, you'll get pregnant 10-14% of the time) aren't going to keep kids from getting pregnant at all.
But Waxman, having no other recourse, finally resorts to the ol' "well, they're going to do it anyway" rationale. The WP:
Waxman and other liberal sex-education proponents argue that adolescents who take abstinence-only programs are ill-equipped to protect themselves if they become sexually active. According to the latest CDC data, 61 percent of graduating high school seniors have had sex.
So, what good are abstinence programs, anyway? The WP:
Nonpartisan researchers have been unable to document measurable benefits of the abstinence-only model. Columbia University researchers found that although teenagers who take "virginity pledges" may wait longer to initiate sexual activity, 88 percent eventually have premarital sex.
No measurable benefit? Kids are waiting longer to have sex, and that's not a measurable benefit?
Okay. If you go sex-ed with condoms or abstinence-only--goes the argument--people are still going to have sex. Might as well teach 'em how to keep sex and procreation compartmentalized, right?
Well, no, of course. But even granting the "they're going to do it anyway" riff. If abstinence programs and virginity pledges keep sexual activity from happening till kids are older, that in itself is not a bad thing. Let's see: your daughter pregnant out of wedlock at fifteen, or your daughter pregnant out of wedlock at nineteen. If forced to choose, wouldn't you choose 19?
I thought so.
Buh-bye, Henry.
Posted by Clifton at December 2, 2004 10:24 AM | TrackBack