Articles
Abstinence in Congressional Testimonies
Digg This!On April 23rd, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held the first ever congressional hearing to address the effectiveness of federally funded abstinence-only programs. The hearing, led by Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, featured numerous public health experts who testified that abstinence-only programs are not only ineffective, but also fail to provide young people the information needed make educated decisions about their sexual health. Legal Momentum has long recognized the ineffectiveness of these programs and the particular harm they cause to young women and girls.
Legal Momentum was pleased to offer written testimony to emphasize to the Congressional committee that these ineffective programs particularly target women and girls. By using biased and misleading information and employing scare tactics aimed at young women, abstinence-only curricula frequently portray girls as naturally chaste and cast them as the gatekeepers of rampant male sexuality. By making sex education into abstinence education, abstinence-only programs fail to genuinely address critical issues such as sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and sexual violence or coercion and fail to provide critical reproductive health information.
The congressional hearing comes at a time when scientifically accurate, unbiased and comprehensive sex education is urgently needed. According to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control, one in four female adolescents aged 14-19 has a sexually transmitted infection, and in 2005-2006, teen birthrates actually increased 3% after fourteen years of steady decline. Federally funded abstinence-only programs prohibit information about condoms or other contraceptives except to discuss failure rates. Despite consistent evidence demonstrating the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only programs, as well as mounting evidence of their harmful effects, these programs receive over $200 million in government funding each year, totally more than $1.5 billion spent since such funding began.
You can read our congressional testimony here: http://www.legalmomentum.org/site/PageServer?pagename=sfr_15
You can view the video of the hearing on the Committee’s Web site here: http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1910
In February 2008, Legal Momentum released our groundbreaking report, Sex, Lies & Stereotypes: How Abstinence-Only Programs Harm Women and Girls (available for download at http://www.legalmomentum.org/ or by contacting info@legalmomentum.org for the print version). The report which was the subject of an earlier Congressional briefing sponsored by Legal Momentum is the most comprehensive examination to date of the nature and extent of federally funded abstinence-only programs. Sex, Lies, and Stereotypes presents an “in-depth exploration of the relationship between abstinence-only education and girls’ health and well-being,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the preface to the report, “I recommend it to all who are involved in discussions of sex education policy, from school boards to federal policymakers.”
Legal Momentum is working with our partner organizations to take crucial steps towards ceasing government funding for ineffective and harmful abstinence-only programs, but much more needs to be done to ensure that our youth receive the complete sexual and reproductive health information and services they deserve. Your support is crucial.
About Legal Momentum
Founded in 1970 as the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, Legal Momentum is the nation’s oldest legal advocacy organization dedicated to advancing the rights of women and girls.
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