Nothing in Erica Barnett’s article on attempts to curb the ridiculous rates of teen pregnancy in the United States will be news to anyone who has spent any time laboring on the sex education side of the pedagogical spectrum. Still, I feel tremendously gratified whenever I encounter yet another piece of evidence to the very real damage that occurs to a society when religion is allowed to influence public policy decisions:
Studies have shown that abstinence-only education does virtually nothing to prevent kids from having sex; the most recent one, released in April 2007, revealed that about half of all kids in both comprehensive and abstinence-only sex education programs had had sex by the end of the study period, and more than a third of both groups had had two or more partners. The only noticeable difference between the groups was that the abstinence-only group used birth control less frequently.
And seriously, how is it that one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations on the planet has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world? Or more to the point: How can the Bush administration not feel tremendous embarrassment about this reality? Christianity may not prevent pregnancy, but it does seem to have a contraceptive effect on shame.
