I love reading research results that are published on Fridays, because you know the results aren’t what the people in charge wanted them to be. Unexpected, unwanted, empirical truths are among the most important truths for us to learn of.
So when I tell you that the Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services waited until a Friday to released the results of a research study it commissioned on the effects of abstinence-only education, what do you think the results of that study were?
Read the full research report from Mathematica Policy Research yourself, and you will find that in controlled experiments in four locations, those children who were randomly assigned to receive abstinence-only sex education were no more likely to actually abstain from sexual activity, had no fewer sex partners, had the same age of a first sexual experience and had no difference in the use of contraception than those children who were randomly assigned to not receive abstinence-only sex education.
In other words, abstinence-only sex education does not accomplish what conservatives and their Republican allies in government say it does.
Imagine that. Now forget it over the weekend.
So the federal government spends $50 million a year for abstinence-only programs, and the states spend an additional 37.5 million in matching funds. And at the end of it all the little darlings can’t even figure out whether condoms decrease sexually transmitted diseases, and a quarter of them still think the pill reduces STD’s.
Imagine spending that money on proper armor for the troops or on making social security secure.
Oh, it has an effect all right – more innocent, gullible youth believe the crap they’re told by their government, church groups and imbecile parents. Later, when relationships develop in their lives, what-do-you know, they’re unprepared for the real thing. More unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and STD’s. Thanks Uncle George!