Could Abstinence-Until-Ready Programs Work?

Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have been a major moralistic fail in delaying sexual activity and preventing teen pregnancy. But apparently there's a new kind of abstinence education in town, one that has shown more promising results.

MSNBC headlines: "Abstinence-ed, minus the morals, may work." The key point in the recent study is that the program under evaluation is not your typical inaccuracy-ridden, condoms-bashing, slut-shaming, gender stereotyping abstinence education. Instead, the program encourages abstinence-until-ready -- a message I can definitely get behind. It's vital that young people understand that they control their own bodies, and that nobody else has the right to pressure them into having sex too early. But it's also unrealistic to expect that the majority of American students will share the moral condemnation abstinence-until-marriage programs dish against premarital sex.

Comprehensive sex education advocates point out that the study targeted 6th and 7th graders, who are young enough that a focus on abstinence might be more useful than for older students. Importantly, since the program refrained from denouncing and lying about contraceptive use, for the one-third of abstinence-educated students who did end up having sex within the next two years, there was no negative impact on condom use. (42% of students who underwent a comprehensive sex ed program, including abstinence education, started having sex in that time span, and 52% in a program that only taught safe-sex techniques.)

What's most intriguing about this study, yet was buried in the news articles I read on the subject, is that researchers were only looking at African-American students. Fellow Women's Rights blogger Whitney Teal wrote just last week that, while ab-only-until-marriage programs have failed to prevent teen pregnancy, comprehensive sex ed also hasn't been doing the trick for many minority teens, and called for an alternative approach. Could this be it? We'll need further studies to figure that out. But Monica Rodriquez of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States says optimistically, "One of the things that's exciting about this study is that it says we have a new tool to add to our repertoire."

Photo credit: meddygarnet