We at Sex Out Loud, a university-funded project for sexual health, encourage open dialogue about sexuality and decision making. We support the choice to be abstinent, just as we encourage everyone to make their own decisions about their sexuality.
President Bush's speech about Iraq Monday contained some powerful language. Naming Saddam Hussein as his \gravest enemy,"" Bush characterized the Iraqis as ""holy warriors"" and that ""Saddam Hussein would be in position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression"" and that ""the time for denying, deceiving and delaying is over.""
While we do not take issue with Bush's diplomacy, we cannot reconcile his rhetoric on foreign policy with his actions regarding domestic health policy.
According to the Washington Post, Bush Administration funding augmentation of abstinence-only sexual education programs has been complemented with ""several government audits, aggressive promotion of abstinence-only programs and a retreat from earlier prevention efforts [that] may put young people and minorities at increased risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.""
The audits and political pressure, which hold the potential to be called 'blackmail' themselves, came from the Department of Health and Human Services, which has requested audits for such groups as the San Francisco-based Stop HIV/AIDS Project and the government's own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In recent weeks, negative external pressure also influenced the CDC's decision to take condom information and ""Programs that Work"" sex education summaries off of the CDC Web site.
Proponents of the Health and Human Services abstinence-only tactic say that abstaining is the only conclusive way to avoid STDs or pregnancy. They are right. But 99 percent of currently abstinent teens and adults will, regardless of marital status, be sexually active at some time in the future and will someday need the honest information.
By prohibiting comprehensive sex education, the government robs people of the right to make informed decisions and makes them think shamefully about their own sexuality. By outlawing sex until marriage, these programs also in effect prohibit sex between people of the same sex. Rebecca Schiefler, an HIV/AIDS researcher and Human Rights Watch said in the Washington Post, ""By teaching young people about abstinence and not condoms, federal health officials are 'censoring and distorting potentially lifesaving information about how to prevent HIV/AIDS.'""
Here are some assembled statistics about sexual health education and opinions from around the nation, including the Alan Guttmacher Institute:
u The proportion of sexuality education teachers who taught abstinence as the only way to prevent pregnancy and STDs increased from 1 in 50 in 1988 to 1 in 4 in 1999.
u At least three-fourths of parents say that in addition to abstinence, sexuality education should cover condom use and other forms of birth control, abortion, sexual orientation, pressures to have sex and the emotional consequences of having sex.
u Federal law establishes a stringent 8-point definition of ""abstinence-only education"" that requires programs to teach that sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong and harmful'for people of any age'and prohibits them from advocating contraceptive use or discussing contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates.
u Despite years of evaluation, there is no evidence to date that abstinence-only education delays teenage sexual activity. Moreover, recent research shows that abstinence-only strategies may deter contraceptive use among sexually active teenagers, increasing their risk of unintended pregnancy and STDs.
Our decisions about sexual activity have health consequences like any other decision we make on a daily basis. Smoking, eating a fatty diet, not wearing a seatbelt and engaging in risky sexual activities all carry potential health risks. By denying the opportunity for education, the government is hiding from us the dangers of activities that are our human right to engage in.
It is George Bush's right to personally advocate abstinence before marriage, even though he himself never claimed to have abstained. It is not his right, though, to legislate access to information that we get about our bodies. Would not the ""gravest danger"" to our sexual health be he whose position puts him ""in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression"" through audits and funding threats? Maybe the time for denying, deceiving and delaying the sexuality of Americans should end.
