Sex-ed should be left up to parents

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: March 4, 2008

An air of sanctimony and hypocrisy as dense as the wee-hour fog on Afton Mountain hovered about Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's decision last fall to yank state money for abstinence education. Abortion peddlers such as Planned Parenthood hailed the move. Kaine championed it as an act of fiscal prudence, as if trimming $275,000 in state spending might somehow bridge a $641 million budget gap, the financial equivalent of dancing on water.

From the lips of a governor who proposed at the same time $75 million in additional spending for pre-kindergarten programs, Kaine's budget rationale sounded like that of a boy boastful for having left behind the crumbs after emptying the cookie jar. Still, Kaine's pals on the left and commentators with them dutifully praised him for recognizing the obvious - namely, that abstinence programs do not work - and acting accordingly to save thousands for a state bleeding money by the millions.
Kaine, Planned Parenthood and others cited a congressional study, which found that students in abstinence-only programs were neither more likely to put off sex nor to have fewer partners than those who participated in conventional sex-education programs.

What Kaine and his gang did not tell us is that the study, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research Inc., focused on students 9 to 11, hardly the ideal age group for research on sexual behavior. The study's authors admitted: "The findings provide no information on the effects [abstinence] programs might have if they were implemented for high school youth or began at earlier ages but served youth through high school."
The facts in our own community tell a story different from the research.

Since 1999, the pregnancy rate among Waynesboro girls 15 to 17 has plunged by almost two thirds, according to Virginia Center for Health statistics. The rate among women 18 to 19 remains alarmingly high. Of every 1,000 in that group, 178 women were pregnant in 2006, almost twice the state rate. But that number is down by more than a third since 2002.

The Central Shenandoah Valley Office on Youth credits those trends to its "Vision of You" abstinence program, offered as part of area high schools' family life education. The program urges students to set boundaries and explains the potential consequences of sex before marriage.

Dr. Doug Larsen, health director of the Central Shenandoah Health District, says his office and the Office on Youth have helped drive down pregnancy rates, but parents play the larger role. "If parents say remain a virgin, that is the best sign or signal they can send a child," he said.

Larsen is right to emphasize the part of parents. Mothers and fathers should take the lead in helping children establish healthy guidelines for themselves not only on the subject of sex but with regard to the multitude of other behavioral choices they make every day.

We would understand and support ending state money for abstinence education if it also included cutting off money for all sexual education. Helping children learn reading, writing and arithmetic falls within the scope of public schools' task. Shaping the choices of children on the subject of sex falls within the parental realm.

Perhaps if schools and government halted their incursions into the latter, the need for state action to slow teen pregnancy rates would wane to the point of extinction.