Posts Tagged ‘abstinence’

The Bible Can’t Solve America’s Teen Pregnancy Problem

Along with America’s recent debate about the necessity of birth control access, many states have quietly returned to abstinence-only education policies in schools. In Wisconsin, for instance, Gov. Scott Walker signed into a law a bill requiring sex ed. teachers to stress abstinence as “the only reliable way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases” while reversing a state law requiring them to instruct on protected sex. In Tennessee, an update recently passed to current abstinence-only standards requires children to be taught that hand-holding and kissing are “gateways” to sex. Overall, 26 states require that abstinence be “stressed” in its schools’ sex-ed programs while no states have a similar law for stressing the use of contraception. The results show that, not only do states with abstinence-only programs have higher rates of teen pregnancy, but that the U.S. overall continues to have strikingly higher rates of teen pregnancy than other developed nations.

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21

04 2012


by K. Mason
posted in Christianity, Ethics, Religious Right
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