Feminist Looking Glass

There’s an editorial today in the New York Times, summarizing a recent study that seems to have favorable findings for abstinence-only education. The study focused on 622 African-American middle schoolers, and found that those who received abstinence-only teachings were less likely to have had sex in the follow-up period than those who received more comprehensive lesson plans.

The NYT article is appropriately skeptical about absintence-only groups using this information as proof that their argument is correct. A key difference between the approach tested and the Bush Administration agenda, is that morality and marriage is left out of the equation. The students in this study weren’t taught to wait for marriage, specifically, just to wait until they’re more ‘mature.’ And the focus was on avoiding pregnancy and STDs, not about morals, or virginity for some religious reason.

Furthermore, I have doubts about the the findings being completely reliable. For one, is this replicable across other demographics? Secondly, there’s no hard evidence – only self reports about sexual activity. It doesn’t seem wholly implausible for those in the abstinence group to have a lower rate of reported sexual intercourse. If kids in this group were told to abstain, they may feel less comfortable with reporting otherwise.

But most importantly, the study focuses on delayed behaviors– not safer ones. Nowhere in the NYT article does the author call in to question whether the goal of sex education should be to delay sex, or teach healthy, safe methods? Is this about not having sex early, or not having sex dangerously?

Ultimately, what are we trying to achieve? A world in which teenagers suppress urges until some arbitrarily defined moment of maturity? Or a world in which young people have the greatest amount of information and access to safe practices, and thus a much lower rate of unplanned pregnancies, or STDs? If you ask my opinion, it’s the latter. And though the two may not be mutually exclusive, the abstinence-only side of this debate seems to paint it this way. In comprehensive sex education, ideally abstinence should be explored, as an option. But abstinence-only is just that– it leaves no room for information about being safe and healthy and sexually active. My theory is: Sex is eventually going to happen, and when it does, I believe that the important question to answer is: will people be equipped with the proper knowledge to make the healthiest choices?

At the end of the day, I believe in choice. It’s why I’m pro-choice and pro-comprehensive sex education. Withholding options and information from people won’t make their lives better. But being honest with them, and trusting them just might.