The Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog

By C. Brent Boles, M.D.

The con­clu­sion of the recent CDC report show­ing the finan­cial and soci­etal bur­den stem­ming from teen sex­ual activ­ity should have been no sur­prise to any­one. As a prac­tic­ing ob/gyn, I see the adverse con­se­quences of sex­ual activ­ity out­side of mar­riage on a daily basis.

I once sat and counted 100 con­sec­u­tive patients who pre­sented to my office for appoint­ments. Had they all avoided sex until mar­riage, only 40 of them would have needed appoint­ments. The other 60 were being seen for preg­nancy and were not mar­ried or were being seen for the phys­i­cal and/or emo­tional con­se­quences of sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted dis­eases and bro­ken rela­tion­ships.

The ben­e­fits of absti­nence are unde­ni­able. One does not need to be a Chris­t­ian to under­stand that the absti­nent teen who waits until mar­riage will never get an STD and will never become preg­nant out of wedlock.

Absti­nence has other ben­e­fits, as well. A recent sur­vey of sex­ual sat­is­fac­tion in Amer­ica showed that the most sex­u­ally sat­is­fied Amer­i­cans were mar­ried Chris­tians. Another study shows that the divorce rate among Chris­tians who were vir­gins on the day of their wed­ding is only 3 per­cent. Sex­u­ally activ­ity in ado­les­cents is an inde­pen­dent risk fac­tor for depres­sion and attempted sui­cide. These teens are two to three times as likely to have depres­sion and three to seven times as likely to attempt sui­cide when com­pared to absti­nent teens.

The last four decades of “com­pre­hen­sive sex edu­ca­tion’’ and “values-neutral edu­ca­tion’’ have been a dis­mal fail­ure. The CDC report doc­u­ments that STDs remain as a prob­lem among teens, and Ten­nessee is 10th in the nation in terms of teen preg­nancy. A recent study shows that even those com­pre­hen­sive pro­grams that reduce unpro­tected sex and delay onset of sex­ual behav­ior have very short-lived effects, and their impact does not extend beyond six months.

Don’t teach bad behaviors

A study pub­lished in the Archives of Pedi­atric and Ado­les­cent Med­i­cine fol­lowed 662 African-American mid­dle school stu­dents from four pub­lic schools. The study eval­u­ated the stu­dents over a three-year period and com­pared an abstinence-only pro­gram with a pro­gram that taught only safe sex and a pro­gram that taught both. The abstinence-only pro­gram also cov­ered STDs, and only 33 per­cent of the stu­dents in that pro­gram became sex­u­ally active dur­ing the study.

About 52 per­cent of the stu­dents in the safe-sex arm of the study became active, and 42 per­cent of the com­bined group became active.

Inter­est­ingly, the abstinence-only cur­ricu­lum also did not reduce con­dom use in those teens who chose to be active. Many crit­ics have claimed that abstinence-only pro­grams reduce con­dom use among those stu­dents who are active. Other stud­ies con­cur with these findings.

Our schools are com­mit­ted to edu­cat­ing stu­dents about the dan­gers of cig­a­rettes, alco­hol and drugs. A myr­iad of pro­grams exist to show teens the con­se­quences of these behav­iors. To my knowl­edge, none of these pro­grams teach stu­dents how to inhale cig­a­rette smoke “safely.’’ None teach teens how to pace alco­hol con­sump­tion in order to keep their blood-alcohol lev­els below 0.8. They don’t teach stu­dents how to roll a joint prop­erly or how to shoot up with clean nee­dles. Such pro­grams focus on avoid­ing such behav­iors alto­gether, as they should.

It is time we rec­og­nize that the pub­lic health prin­ci­ple of pri­mary pre­ven­tion — risk avoid­ance instead of risk reduc­tion — should apply to sex education.

C. Brent Boles, M.D., is a mem­ber of the Chris­t­ian Med­ical and Den­tal Asso­ci­a­tion, is in pri­vate prac­tice in Murfrees­boro, and is the chief of ob/gyn at Mid­dle Ten­nessee Med­ical Cen­ter. He is also the Affil­i­ate Res­i­dency Pro­gram Direc­tor for the depart­ment of ob/gyn at the Meharry School of Medicine.

Souce:   Tennessean.com