ABSTINENCE-UNTIL-MARRIAGE EDUCATION

Students from coast to coast in the United States are asking for more balanced and comprehensive sex-ed programs in our jr. high and high schools. What they’ve been getting in most schools has been a superficial treatment of the subject with emphasis on condoms, how to put on a condom and where to get free condoms. If you’re asking, “Has it really been this bad...this superficial?” — The answer is, “Yes, in too many of our schools it has been like this.”  Too many high school sex-ed programs emphasize safe sex without any consideration for the moral values and life consequences that should be associated with a responsible viewpoint about sexual behavior. The youth of our country deserve better than this! 

In recognition of how important the young people of our country are and how many of them are asking for adult support to keep themselves celibate until marriage, the Bush administration has promised to “elevate abstinence education from an afterthought to an urgent priority.” Focus Community Incorporated is a non-profit organization that is serving local communities by means of literature, on site seminars and local campaigns to educate young people and parents about viable alternatives in the area of sex-education. We are striving to ensure that abstinence gets a fair hearing in the nation’s Sex Education Programs.   

Most people would be surprised to learn how many of today’s young people truly want to be responsible and morally pure with regards to their sexual behavior. They want abstinence taught as the wisest and safest course of conduct. They want help from parents who will advocate and demand abstinence of their children. And, they want a comprehensive sex-ed program in their schools that will candidly report the dangers of promiscuity.  They know that media glamorizes casual sex and even the homosexual lifestyle. But they want the truth. They want answers. Are homosexual practices the leading cause of the world wide AIDS epidemic or not?   Is oral sex a viable answer to preventing unwanted pregnancy as some of their peers maintain? Can anal and oral sex lead to STDs just like vaginal sex can? You can talk plainly to them; they just want the honest truth...truth they rarely get in most sex-ed classrooms.   It seems obvious that teaching abstinence would be most effective if administered while students are sexually inexperienced. It seems equally obvious that “first sex” would be greatly delays and teenage pregnancies would be reduced if abstinence was taught early on.  

Right now America leads the world with the highest rate of teenage pregnancies, and this shameful fact could be greatly changed through teaching the advantages of practicing abstinence. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, an organization that keeps records about teen pregnancy in the U.S., at least 34% of our young girls experience pregnancy in their teen years. This translates into 850,000 teen pregnancies each year in the U.S., or to put it more vividly, 100 teenage girls get pregnant each hour. Abstinence education would certainly alter these sad statistics.   

WHY DELAYING SEX IS IMPORTANT Teens who have sex for the first time at a younger age are more likely to express regret in later life. One study showed that two-thirds of sexually experienced young women related that they wished they had waited longer to have sex. The percentage was higher among younger teens, ages 12-14 (83%), than those of the ages of 15-19 (60%). Teens who have sex in their early teens have more sexual partners, are less likely to use contraception, and are more likely to get pregnant. For example, one in seven sexually experienced young teens become pregnant by age 15. And, they are more likely to have older partners.  Both boys and girls with older sexual partners (two or more years older) are less likely to use contraception and are more likely to become pregnant or to cause a pregnancy than those with a partner who is closer in age.

Many girls who have sex at a young age reported that their first sexual experience was coercive.  Add to this the fact that 24% of teen girls who had sexual intercourse before age 14 report that their first sexual experience was against their will. It has been shown that coercive sex increases the risk of multiple partners, contraceptive failure, and teen pregnancy. 

It has been clearly shown that the teaching of abstinence at the jr. high level has greatly reduced the occurrence of “first sex” at an early age. Those who have willingly taken a virginity pledge have consistently been those who have not fallen prey to the teenage pregnancy syndrome.  Young people who have become personally convicted that they should delay sex until marriage, and whose peers also feel the same way, are more likely to do so. The teaching of abstinence until marriage is decidedly they best approach for correcting the chaotic situation that pervades the lives of so many of today’s youth.  Charles Cook, D.Min., Executive Director, Focus Community Incorporated