Abstinence

Abstinence

The most obvious way of preventing conception is abstaining from sex, and this became one of the most high-profile forms of birth control in the USA in the 1990s. Abstinence has the beneficial side effect of preventing sexually transmitted diseases.

The Abstinence Education Program began in 1997, having been authorised as part of the Welfare Reform Act 1966. In 2004 the US Congress allocated more than $131 million to "abstinence" initiatives that teach middle school and high school youngsters that sexual abstinence until marriage is the best choice.

Projects that teach abstinence as the only appropriate way to approach pre-marital sex are criticised by some as leaving students less able to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases than if they had been taught all the options available to them in their sexual lives.

The dark side of abstinence

The effectiveness of Abstinence Education was put in doubt by a report published in April 2005 in the Journal of Adolescent Health, which showed that some of those who pledged abstinence indulged in other sorts of risky sexual activity instead.

Researchers from Yale and Columbia Universities studied 12,000 adolescents and found that teens pledging virginity until marriage were more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who didn't have intercourse. Such behaviour increased the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.

Among virgins, boys who pledged abstinence were four times more likely to have had anal sex, according to the study.

Teenagers who pledged abstinence were six times more likely to have oral sex than teens that abstained from intercourse without a pledge.

Teens who pledged abstinence were also less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or get tested for STDs.

The aims of abstinence education

The official abstinence education initiative aims to teach youngsters the social, psychological, and health gains to be obtained by abstaining from sexual activity.

The aim of the initiative is to teach children:

• That abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage is the expected standard for all school-age children
• That abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems;
• That a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity
• That sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects
• That bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child's parents and society
• How to reject sexual advances
• How alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances
• The importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity

The debate

Abstinence education becomes controversial when it is "abstinence-only" education.

Many educationalists worry that these programmes don't give teenagers the necessary information to reduce their risks if they decide, despite the teaching, to have sex. They believe that children should be taught about contraception and how to have safe (or at any rate, safer) sex, even if abstinence is the ideal approach to sex before marriage.

There is further concern that abstinence-only teaching is unlikely to have any influence on teenagers who have already started to have sex. This is one reason why it is now considered important to start sex education programmes - either abstinence or conventional - as early as possible.