Monday, April 16, 2007

Abstinence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

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$1.5 Billion Abstinence Drive 'Waste'

NEW YORK. A sum of $1.5 billion spent by the US Government to promote sexual abstinence in teenagers over the past decade may have been entirely wasted, a study produced for Congress indicates.


The six-year study conducted by Mathematica Policy Research followed the sexual behavior of more than 2,000 teenagers. It indicated that those who had received abstinence-based sexual education exhibited almost identical behavior to those who had had a more conventional education.


Teenagers from both groups had the same average age for their first sexual experience: 14.9 years. One quarter in both groups had had sex with three or more partners.


President Bush has been a proponent of abstinence-based education, with federal funding rising steadily under his Administration.


[From Times Online, April 16 2007]

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