Sep 4, 2008 8:31 pm US/Pacific
Palin Renews Debate Over Abstinence-Only Sex Ed.
(CBS 5)
In the week since John McCain announced his choice of running mate, much has been learned a lot about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's beliefs. She endorses drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Palin supports teaching creationism, alongside evolution, in schools. And she believes in abstinence-only education, though she hasn't tried to enact legislation reflecting that position.
Palin's stance on sex education has received a lot of attention since she revealed that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant—because abstinence-only proponents believe kids should not be taught about contraception, but simply be told not to have sex until they get married.
Her view is in line with a Bush administration program that will hand out over $200 million this year to promote the abstinence-only philosophy in schools across America. Palin's home state of Alaska accepts more than $700,000 of that money each year. But California has rejected that funding.
"Abstinence-only is illegal in California," said sex education researcher Phyllida Burlingame, who helped write the law. "Sometimes people think, 'Well, what's wrong with abstinence?' There's nothing wrong with teaching about abstinence, and that's true. But abstinence-only denies young people the information that they need about condoms and contraception."
"We all want to believe that if we tell teenagers to not have sex that they won't have sex," said Kris Ahmed, director of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition in San Mateo County. But in fact, she said, nearly half of all U.S. teens have sex at least once before they leave high school.
That's one reason California law requires sex education classes to teach not only abstinence-but also medically accurate information to help prevent disease or pregnancy.
"We need to teach them about birth control," insisted Ahmed. "We need to teach them about condoms. We need to teach them about sexually transmitted diseases. And not just tell them to not be sexually active. It's not working."
In fact, numerous studies show that abstinence-only programs are ineffective in reducing teen sex or preventing disease and pregnancy. Burlingame said abstinence-only is based on ideology, not health science.
"There are no mainstream science and public health agencies that support abstinence-only sex education. None," said Burlingame.
But just because it is against the law to teach abstinence-only in California doesn't mean it's not happening here. A CBS 5 Investigates probe found Fremont schools using an abstinence-only curriculum with misleading information about condoms, in apparent violation of state law.
"We need to do whatever we can to make sure that our young people are safe," said Burlingame. "So denying them information, providing them with misinformation is doing them a huge disservice."
Over the past decade, the federal government has given states more than $1 billion for abstinence-only education. California is the only state that never took the money. Recently 24 other states have stopped accepting abstinence-only funding as well.
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