Teenagers already know how NOT to have sex, they've been doing that their entire lives.

Abstinence "Education" should be more accurately referred to as "Abstinence Coercion". IT is more or less defined by what it lacks than by what it entails, you can teach comprehensive sex education and still push abstinence on teenagers. The two are not mutually exclusive. One is primary prevention, the other is secondary prevention. Effective education should teach both, but the reality is eventually most teens are going to have sex, so they should be prepared. The idea that everyone should wait until marriage is one tied to religious beliefs and has no place in public education.

Abstinence ONLY sex education is NOT sex education but a presentation of misinformed Christian ideas. Most the materials are medically inaccurate and full of harmful information.

Millions of federal money went to the 'ONLY' programs which funded purity rings, purity balls and other ridiculous purity programs.

I have no problem teaching abstinence as part of a comprehensive program, and PP does that.

"But the panel [...] did come to another rather surprising conclusion: There's "insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness" of the abstinence-only approach with regards to the reduction of teen pregnancy and STD transmission."

This is not a novel conclusion: a study by the Mathematica Policy Research Group and another by the Government Accountability Office both already effectively found the same thing, as I describe in more detail here: http://blog.seliger.com/2008/10/12/what-to-do-when-research-indicates-your-approach-is-unlikely-to-succeed-part-i-of-a-case-study-on-the-community-based-abstinence-education-program-rfp regarding the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program (CBAE).

to quote from Ms Clark-Flory's post:

Congress is currently mulling President Obama's proposal to allocate government funds only to sex ed programs that are scientifically shown to work. Based on this report, at least, abstinence-only would be out.

Ah, that explains it, doesn't it? :-)

The main problem with "abstinence only" education is the fact that it's rooted in religious belief and not scientific fact. Further, abstinence only education has an extremely naive world view in regard to human sexuality, because it assumes that fear tactics and condemnation will be enough to suppress the enormous sexual drives of human beings. And because of this stance, rather than educate, abstinence only "education" buries its head in the sand with regard to facts about sex and healthy sexual behavior, leaving individuals who "learned" about sexuality under this sham completely ill prepared and mis-informed about the realities of sex and healthy sexual behavior.

No one wants teen pregnancies, or teens contracting STDs. But let's be realistic, telling teens to "wait for marriage" and "save themselves" isn't going to work either- teens will have sex. Isn't it better to be frank and scientifically accurate with the information we give them, rather than warping them with religious dogma masquerading as facts?

can't outweigh the natural drive for sexual intimacy between couples. In my grandmother's time, teens and 20 year olds all had several awful examples of lives ruined by non-marital sex. A woman shunned by all her friends. A woman who had a shot-gun marriage to an alcoholic abuser and was stuck with him for the rest of her life.

For a teen today, the consequences are a lot less dire. Look at Bristol Palin. Sure, she's a mother way too young, but she's not facing any social stigma from the chastity crowd -- she's become a hero to them. Her family will probably help her raise her child and she will probably have no trouble getting married when she's a little older.

Further, in my grandmother's time, society limited the opportunities of young men and women to create and consummate pair-bonds outside of marriage. Today, young people have plenty of time and privacy to create strong pair-bonds as nature intended. And then the abstinence movement asks them not to consummate those pair-bonds. Yeah, that's going to work.

with no scientific basis. Talking realistically and truthfully about the human sexual drive, in the context of abstinence only might have had some success. Particularly since I imagine these programs were more popular in areas with lower rates of early teen sex than, say inner cities, which probably didn't bother trying to tell their students to wait until marriage.

Since a 2006 report by the Guttmacher Insitute lists the top ten states for teen pregnancy as (from one to 10): Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, California, Georgia, North Carolina and Arkansas, I guess those rock-ribbed Republicans in rural America "didn't bother trying to tell their students to wait until marriage" either.

Here's what I don't get about the abstinence-only crowd: for a group that insists government stay out of their business, why oh why would they want government-funded, government-run public school teaching their kids deeply personal values and morals?!

In the spirit of rendering unto Caesar, school is the place to learn that 2+2=4, the earth revolves around the sun, and sperm+egg=embryo, which is carried for 9 months in the uterus.

Home is the place to discuss when and why to allow sperm and egg to meet, or not meet. To insist on abstinence-only education in schools no only gives government an over-sized role in everyone's personal life, it also lets parents off the hook for a crucial part of parenting.

In the spirit of rendering unto Caesar, school is the place to learn that 2+2=4, the earth revolves around the sun, and sperm+egg=embryo, which is carried for 9 months in the uterus.

Indeed. School is the place for 2+2=4, home is the place for discussing how to handle money and what to do with it. School is the place for the earth revolving around the sun, home is the place for your viewpoints on life and religion. But I suppose some people want to shift the burden of responsibility, perhaps because they're a bit squeamish and shy and don't want to talk about sex with their kids. In our society, 'sex' is still far from being a normal topic... American History or World Literature might be good topics at home in case dad and mom like to talk about them, but not sex ed, not sexual ethics, not for still so many families.

Home is the place to discuss when and why to allow sperm and egg to meet, or not meet. To insist on abstinence-only education in schools no only gives government an over-sized role in everyone's personal life, it also lets parents off the hook for a crucial part of parenting.

I couldn't agree more. I wished so many people didn't want to be left off the hook in this particular area, since it's such an important one (that's how new families get formed after all). And I do see how ironical it is for people who are against big government to prefer that something other than the individual take care of their kids' sexual awareness.