Abstinence-only education and the rise of teenage preganancies

February 8, 2010 by Yamini Piplani 

Nevada trails New Mexico in highest number of teen pregnancies in the U.S.

There are problems that go away if you ignore them for long enough. But then there are problems which stubbornly insist on hanging around no matter how much we talk about them or throw money at them.

Americans are usually good at fixing problems in the long term – problems with technology, problems with our economy and problems with the political process.

But there is one issue that has been plaguing the country for as long as I can remember: teenage pregnancies.

For the first time in a decade, the rate of teen pregnancies rose three percent in 2006, the latest year for which statistics were available. Overall, the birth rate for teens increased four percent and the number of abortions increased by 1 percent.

These statistics also show obvious racial disparities: Even though the rates of sexual activity are similar, ethnic minority teens are almost three times as likely to get pregnant as white teens.

Nevada leads the nation in some of the worst areas to lead the nation in, and so, as expected, Nevada is leading the nation in the rate of teen pregnancies, just behind New Mexico. In Nevada, 90 out of 1000 teenage girls became pregnant in 2006.

Of course, we cannot yet tell whether this uptick shows a one-time peak or a longer-term pattern pointing to more pregnancies in the future.

The Guttmacher Institute, which released the study last month, links the increase in these statistics to the declining contraceptive use among teens in the U.S., a phenomenon consistent with the strict abstinence-only policies that deny teenagers information about contraceptives, and which received major funding under the Bush administration.

Yes, what we are taught in school matters. A school is the easiest place to reach a developing brain. It is a place where large quantities of teens can be reached and with age-appropriate and medically-accurate information.

The Bush administrations abstinence-only programs did not only champion the message of “no sex before marriage,” but also ensured that the only mention of contraceptives was in reference to their failure rate. When this happens, teen knowledge of contraceptives declines, and therefore, so does the will to use them.

Considering that nearly half of all American high school-aged teens have had sex at least once, and that a sexually active teen not using any contraceptives has a 90 percent chance of getting pregnant within a year, it is no wonder that the pregnancy rate has increased.

Wake up people! The abstinence-only message does not work when the students you are talking to are already sexually active. This method has proven to work only in the case of very young children, not those in their mid-to-late teen years. Did you know 99 percent of Americans have sex before marriage?

I can see that an abstinence-only education has its merits and that it might work in some places. I cannot speak for other states, but I can guarantee that this approach does not work in a society where strippers and prostitutes are literally a few miles away, and where billboards of adult services and practically naked women dominate the advertising world.

So, the reality is that, for a teen, the decision to have sex does not solely rely upon what he or she has been taught in school, but rather, the decision comes from a mind that reasons based on a combination of social (peer pressure), economic (poverty) and cultural factors that are far beyond the reach of a simple public school education.

I know that my 8th and 9th grade health and Sex Ed classes here in Las Vegas were a complete waste of time. I didn’t learn much about my body’s reproductive functions, about STDs or about contraceptives and prevention. Our class didn’t even watch the infamous childbirth video.

But I did not choose to have sex carelessly because my values were not solely a product of my education. I had strong cultural and familial backing to my decisions.

Here’s the fact: Culture has to not only coincide, but also reinforce, what we are taught in school for a message of abstinence to be effective, and sin city’s culture neither agrees with nor reinforces an abstinence-only message.

And it’s not just about Las Vegas. With a few exceptions, the U.S. is a country where sex is everywhere. Our socially liberal culture promotes sexual promiscuity with the help of TVs, magazines, radios, the Internet, and now, smart phones. We live in a society where everything is sexualized – ads for underwear and deodorant to ads for food all use sex to sell.

How do we expect kids to abstain when sex is all around them? With its intense value of individual liberty in an era when teen sex is common, our culture allows for, and even encourages, sexual freedom for teens.

Merely changing the school curriculum to include more education of contraceptives will not make the problem of teenage pregnancies go away completely, but it will definitely make a difference for some. We cannot change our culture in a few years, but we can change the national school curriculum in that time.

The ultimate solution will have to come from a shift in our cultural values, but until that happens, we should focus on reversing the wrongs that have worsened the problem.