Study Finds Comprehensive Sex Ed Cuts Teen Pregnancies

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Marcela Howell, Advocates for Youth, 202.419.1448 or 202.841.3292 (mob)

WASHINGTON, March 26 – Another study finding that abstinence-only sex education courses are ineffective in curbing adolescent sexual risk-taking has also found that comprehensive programs do work, especially to reduce teen pregnancy.

The study published today in the Journal of Adolescent Health also concluded that teaching about contraception did not increase sexual activity or sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers. Teaching abstinence-only failed to lower those rates, the study said, and also failed to reduce teen pregnancy or to delay sexual initiation.

University of Washington researchers led by Pamela K. Kohler examined teens’ responses to a 2002 federal study, the National Survey of Family Growth. They found that teenagers receiving comprehensive sex education, including information about contraceptives, reported about half as many pregnancies as teens who had received abstinence-only or no sex education. “It is not harmful to teach teens about birth control in addition to abstinence,” Kohler concluded.

In a Journal editorial, Norman A. Constantine of the University of California School of Public Health in Berkeley said that while “rigorous and compelling evidence” now supports the conclusion that abstinence-only programs do not work, the new report is “a critical contribution” to evidence in favor of the comprehensive approach.

Responding to earlier reports of abstinence-only programs’ failure, seventeen states have now rejected federal Title V funding for them: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

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