President Obama's new budget includes elimination of community-based abstinence education funding

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/05/07/the-end-of-abstinence-only/

Obama's new budget includes elimination of community-based abstinence education funding


The End of Abstinence-Only
Posted by Amy Sullivan


The President's FY2010 budget was released this morning (you can search through all 1376 pages here) and among the proposed changes it includes is the elimination of Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) funding. Under the Bush administration, CBAE grants went to programs that teach kids the only way to prevent pregnancy and avoid sexually-transmitted infections is to postpone sex until marriage. Budget language explicitly prevented those programs from providing students "any other education regarding sexual conduct."

As I explained in the magazine a couple of months ago, abstinence-only programs have not proven nearly as successful as approaches that combine the message that abstinence is a good goal for teenagers (see: Bristol Palin) with comprehensive and accurate education about contraception, disease prevention, and decision-making skills.

The Obama budget eliminates the main federal funding streams for abstinence-only education (some of which have been around since welfare reform) and replaces them with $110 million in competitive grants to "fund teen pregnancy prevention programs," with at least $75 million reserved for "programs that replicate the elements of one or more teenage pregnancy prevention programs that have been proven through rigorous evaluation to delay sexual activity, increase contraceptive use (without increasing sexual activity), or reduce teenage pregnancy." It also authorizes $50 million in new mandatory teen pregnancy prevention grants to states.

Notably, $25 million of the funding for what the budget calls a new Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative is set aside for the development and testing of innovative approaches to preventing teen pregnancy. So many of the programs that annoy opponents of abstinence-only education--and those that annoy proponents of abstinence-only--are out-dated and ineffective anyway. With teen pregnancy rates inching up again after a nearly 15-year drop and the vast majority of parents in favor of comprehensive sex education (95% of parents of middle-schoolers in a 2004 Kaiser Foundation poll thought contraception was an "appropriate topic"), it's long past time to develop sex ed programs that work.

We're DOOMED

He could cut a $25,000 program to provide subsidies for hemorrhoid cream makers, and the proctologists' trade groups would have a very public shitfit.

Parents need to get off their lazy/scared asses and teach their children about sexual responsibility. It's their jobs, not the government's.

You don't get any facts aside from all the ones that might kill you. It's a scare class, with little educational value at all. At least that's how it was in the early 90's. I didn't get abstinence education, I got told that if I had sex, I was completely guaranteed to catch AIDS and die.

to think of the money that was wasted on this puritanical bullshit. My school needs money!

How is Palin's daughter gonna keep from getting pregnant again...now? :shrug:

It has been very clear for years that abstinence only education doesn't work. So,I am pleased to see that Obama is getting rid of funding for CBAE. I am glad that he is replacing CBAE with $110 million in grants for teen pregnancy programs that have consistently proven their efficacy. I also applaud his interest in making money available for research on newer programs which might prove to be useful in the future. I think this is a big step in the right direction for our country. We don't need to waste money on abstinence only education programs that years of studies have already discredited.