Abstinence Education WOO!!

A link to Miss Molly Redden's (class of 2011, Georgetown University) article on how abstinence education "screws" (her language, not mine!) students.



http://www.georgetownvoice.com/2008-03-27/voices/promoting-abstinence-while-screwing-students

AND... my response:

Molly Redden’s recent article on abstinence education is a prime example of how many use emotion and personal feeling, rather than logic, to make their case when it comes to premarital sex. I did not personally attend Miss Redden’s high school (incidentally, my high school did not teach abstinence) and so I cannot vouch for the truth of what her educators taught her. I do however, spend all of my time at my Heritage Foundation internship collecting the research on family and marriage from peer reviewed journals. The research is decidedly not on Miss Redden’s side.

Virtually all studies on the subject find that premarital sex unequivocally increases chances for divorce. In fact, the probability of divorce actually increases with the number of sexual partners that one has had. (Georgetown offers its students free access to the Journal of Family and Marriage and other related journals through Jstor, so feel free to fact-check me on this one).

Redden also makes much of the fact that lecturers told her that condoms are ineffective at preventing pregnancy. She is correct that this is empirically false (perfect condom use will result in pregnancy 3% of the time; typical use will result in pregnancy 14% of the time – these statistics are required to be displayed on condom packaging), yet neglects the far more troubling fact that condoms are significantly less efficacious at preventing STDs. The data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is that condoms are when used with perfect accuracy are 85% effective against AIDs. No clinical study has of yet been able to prove that condoms effectively prevent other STDs, but to give condoms the benefits of the doubt, lets say that they are also 85% effective when used with perfect accuracy (read: in laboratory conditions virtually impossible to replicate). Given that STDs are currently the most common diseases in America next to the cold and the flu and are particularly rampant amongst college-age Americans, a 15% failure rate should not make anyone feel safe, especially considering that the STDs out there can lead to unsightly and uncomfortable rashes at the least and permanent damage to the reproductive system or even death in the worst cases.

Redden also claims that “insinuating to a high school student that he or she won’t be mentally sophisticated until marriage is cruel.” Yet when we consider that the median age for marriage is 26.9 for men and 25.3 for women and a 2005 NIH study found that the decision-making capacity of the brain is not fully developed until age 25, this is less a cruel lie than, well, a fact. In high school and college we readily assent to having, indeed rely upon, advisors to help us navigate everything from class schedules to where to apply to school to how to deal with frustrating landlords. We accept without argument advisors in so many areas of our lives, why can we not accept them in the arguably more important field of sex and romance?

Miss Redden’s overall argument eventually boils down to: “Abstinence education is wrong because it made me feel bad.” But this is not a solid argument by any standards of logic. Many things we learn, and which nevertheless have great value, make us ‘feel bad.’ Learning about slavery, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War and genocide in Sudan are a few examples that quickly spring to mind, yet no student in her right mind would suggest that these subjects should be nixed from curricula simply because they leave us feeling profoundly unsettled and pessimistic about humanity. Abstinence educators may tell students things they don’t want to hear, but this does not make them liars any more than teaching students about the Cambodian killing fields would.