“Don’t worry,” a mother said when her young boy ran into a busy street. “We don’t tell him not to play in the street anymore. We know that he’s going to do it anyway. That’s why we gave him the bike helmet. He knows how to wear it. Let him explore -- he’ll be fine.”
This scenario demonstrates the rising tension playing out between supporters of abstinence education and proponents of comprehensive sex education in the classroom, a debate directly affecting North Dakota’s students.
“Comprehensive sex education” (CSE) and “abstinence education” (AE) are labels that broadly define two differing approaches to sex education in public schools. CSE is a contraceptive-based approach to human sexuality focusing on disease and pregnancy prevention. AE teaches teens how to avoid risk by making good health decisions and focusing on the total person.
All federally-funded abstinence programs are required to have as their purpose, teaching the social, psychological and health gains by abstaining from sexual activity. Abstinence programs seek to prepare kids to make healthy choices by utilizing character training and goal-setting, information regarding sexual health and pregnancy, and tools that enable kids to wait until marriage before engaging in sexual activity. Included in this training are strategies for avoiding other high-risk behaviors like drugs and alcohol that have a significant level of interconnectedness to premarital sexual activity.
On the surface, CSE is presented as a medically accurate, full-disclosure program on human sexuality teaching kids to avoid pregnancy and disease. However, Dr. Miriam Grossman, who spent more than ten years as a psychiatrist at UCLA Student Psychological Services, has been sounding the alarm about the true goals of CSE. Namely, sexual freedom for kids as a “right.” Social justice. Included in her warning to parents are lists of websites to which SIECUS, Advocates for Youth, and Planned Parenthood (all vociferous advocates of CSE) refer kids. These sites include discussions on topics such as popular sex positions, sexual play and fantasies, sexual experimentation with another or same-sex gender, oral and anal sex, and sadomasochism.
Calling something comprehensive suggests that everything important will be covered, even abstinence. In spite of a recommendation from the CDC, a Heritage Foundation study reported that messages about abstinence comprise less than 5% of CSE curricula. Unfortunately, when abstinence is included in CSE, the focus is often counterproductive to a true abstinence message.
For example, Planned Parenthood’s (PP) CSE curriculum and lessons for educators called Making Sense of Abstinence seem to define abstinence as merely not passing body fluids. On the list of PP’s activities that one could do and still be “abstinent” was cuddling naked and watching porn videos together. In another CSE curriculum called Be Proud! Be Responsible!, taking showers together is considered a “green light” activity.
The difference between CSE and true abstinence education is the quality of the message. CSE’s clear message is nobody expects you to choose abstinence -- that’s why there are pills and condoms and here’s how to use them. Now feel free to explore. Both the mother who lets her four-year-old play in the street and CSE providers are sending children into the world with a misguided sense of their level of protection and limited awareness of the dangers looming.
In recent years both kids and adults have been given the message that using condoms equals “safe sex.” Research shows this is not the case. The risks of contracting STD’s or becoming pregnant are only minimized, not eradicated. According to the CDC, nearly 9 million new STD cases in the United States each year are among young people ages 15-24. One in four adolescent girls in the U.S. is infected with an STD, and every year approximately 820,000 young women under the age of 19 become pregnant.
The reality is that actual condom usage among teens is not optimal. CSE supporters cite this as a reason teenagers need more encouragement to use condoms. Some suggest that telling teens about the failure rates of condoms prevent their use, but not telling them exposes young people to risks that may significantly affect their future. Dr. Grossman had the unenviable task of receiving students into her office who, after following the dictates of “safe sex,” became infected by an incurable STD and who—justifiably—felt betrayed.
Not only are teens not told the whole truth about condom failure and STDs, teens also don’t properly assess the risk. Doctors have discovered that the prefrontal cortex of the brain does not develop until a person is in their mid-twenties. This is the part of the brain that engages in critical thinking and sound judgments, linking present decision-making to future consequences. Scientists have found, instead, that the teen brain makes decisions mostly in the highly-impressionable emotion center of the brain.
CSE’s focus on contraceptive-based education and sexual exploration “as long as it’s consensual” and its message that “only you know when you’re ready” puts kids in danger of making some potentially life-altering decisions based on emotions and hormones instead of mature judgment with future goals in mind. The negative effects of premarital sexual activity are clear: several recent studies show a link between sexual activity and depression and suicide, as well as considerably higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse.
Although CSE providers claim to be medically up-to-date and accurate, they also fail dramatically in the realm of communicating to teens the affects of sexual behavior on the brain. Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience research demonstrate how sexual activity has life-changing impact on the human brain, showing that the brain forms organic connections through the repetition of events or activities. Exciting a dopamine rush through sexual activity conditions the brain to desire repeated sexual experiences. Oxytocin (in females) and vasopressin (in males) released during sexual activity leads to bonding and attachment to a sexual partner. While these chemical realities help yield strong marriages, they can also lead to repeated destructive decisions that can end in disease and deep emotional pain, affecting a person’s ability to bond in future relationships.
While AE enables children to embrace a positive, stable future by avoiding destructive decisions, CSE leaves this very human side of sexuality—and its impact on future aspirations, dreams, and goals—out of the picture.
When it comes to the topic of sex, a Zogby poll found that parents, regardless of whether they are liberal or conservative, overwhelmingly prefer abstinence education 2-to-1 over CSE once they understand the difference. Nine out of ten teens also believe a strong abstinence message is important. Surveys reveal that 52% of teens nationwide are virgins (57% in North Dakota).
Contrary to the wishes of both teens and parents, lawmakers seem to be giving up on abstinence education. In May, President Obama’s budget set in place plans to defund abstinence education. This summer, the House withdrew funding for abstinence education. On July 31st, the Senate Appropriations Committee, including Senator Dorgan, eliminated all funding for abstinence education, channeling money instead to CSE and “pregnancy prevention” programs which were already receiving the vast majority of federal funds (4:1).
This legislative assault on abstinence education has a direct affect on North Dakota. Make a Sound Choice (MSC), the Fargo-based organization which facilitates abstinence education programs statewide, will lose the funding it needs to provide the abstinence message to the over 3,000 students it serves in North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.
MSC is a highly successful program. An independent NDSU evaluation of MSC has shown that its benchmark goals have been exceeded by a strong margin. For example, the goal that youth participating in the program will plan to stay abstinent until marriage was benchmarked at 50%. Actual performance is 70.5%, averaged out over two-and-a-half years, which is outstanding performance. Success like this begs the question why Senator Dorgan and others in Washington would pass legislation to end funding for a program with such proven effectiveness?
The fact is that the recent federal defunding of abstinence education is the result of a very concentrated, agenda-driven effort by numerous organizations to stop abstinence education in its tracks. For example, Advocates for Youth proudly boast that they are “at the forefront of a national legislative strategy to eliminate federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.”
In 1998, SIECUS began an effort, underwritten by organizations like Soros’ Open Society Institute and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, to critically evaluate abstinence education programs. In 2002, SIECUS partnered with 140 organizations with the goal of undermining Title V abstinence education federal funding for the states. By 2008, 25 states had agreed to reject Title V funding.
In 2008, a Congressional hearing on abstinence education chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman featured six panel “experts” opposing abstinence education against one in favor of abstinence education. During the hearing, Rep. Virgina Foxx asked the panel if they would support federal funding of abstinence education if it was proven more effective than CSE. Five of the seven panel members said “no,” confirming that even objective data will not persuade them from their political agenda.
Although North Dakota Senators Dorgan and Conrad have a history of not supporting abstinence education, in a recent Senate Finance Committee vote, Senator Conrad voted to reinstate Title V federal abstinence funding, an amendment that still needs to be passed on the Senate floor.
It is time to let our Congressmen hear our voice on this very consequential issue. We may not have Soros’ money, but parents, grandparents, mentors, teachers, and students must engage in the process to protect our children. Their future, and our nation’s future, is why sex education is everyone’s issue.
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