A protester holds up a placard during a climate-change protest in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, yesterday. The Step It Up campaign has organised more than 1,400 events in all 50 states, all with the aim of urging the U.S. Congress to cut heat-trapping carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. - Reuters WASHINGTON, (Reuters):
Abstinence-only education programmes meant to teach children to avoid sex until marriage failed to control their sexual behaviour, according to a United States government report.
Teenagers who took part in the programmes as elementary and middle-school students were just as likely to have sex as those who did not take part in them, the survey found.
The report, ordered by Congress, was not released by the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), but by activists and by California Democratic Republican Henry Waxman's office. An HHS spokeswoman did not answer a request for a comment.
The report revived the debate on government abstinence-only education programmes, which are strongly supported by the administration of President George W. Bush.
"For both the programmes and control group youth, the reported mean age at first intercourse was identical: 14.9 years," says the report, available on the Internet at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/abstinence07/index.htm.
Teens in both groups were just as likely to use condoms or birth control, the report found - countering the fears of critics of abstinence-only education, who say children ignorant of how to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases will simply have more unprotected sex.
For the report, Christopher Trenholm and colleagues at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. interviewed more than 2,000 teenagers with an average age of 16 1/2. They lived in rural and urban communities in Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Virginia.
About 1,200 of them had taken part in abstinence-only education programmes four to six years before.
"Over the last 12 months, 23 per cent of both groups reported having had sex and always using a condom; 17 per cent of both groups reported having had sex and only sometimes using a condom; and four per cent of both groups reported having had sex and never using a condom," the researchers wrote.
SEVERAL PARTNERS
"Programme and control group youth also did not differ in the number of partners with whom they had sex," they added.
About 25 percent in both groups had already had sex with three or more partners.
"These data supports what a growing body of public-health evidence has indicated: Abstinence-only programmes don't protect teen health," said Waxman, chairman of the House of Representatives Government Oversight Committee.
"In short, American taxpayers appear to have paid over one billion federal dollars for programmes that have no impact."
The report said the federal government has spent $87.5 million annually since 1998 for abstinence-only education programmes.
Activists said the findings showed that children need more comprehensive education about abstinence, contraception and sex in general.
ABSTINENCE AND CONTRACEPTION
"The vast majority of the public does not see abstinence and contraception as an either/or proposition - they want teens to be informed of both," Sarah Brown, executive director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, said in a statement.
"We have been promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS, and that's not just bad public-health policy, its bad ethics," added James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth.
But proponents of abstinence-only education said the report just suggested more such education is needed.
"To the contrary, the report specifically indicates that programmes should continue with changes where necessary to make them more effective, particularly 'promoting support for abstinence among peer networks' as an important feature." said Dr. Gary Rose, president of The Medical Institute.
