Sadly, the hope that the abstinence-only funding restriction in PEPFAR has been dashed. This from RH Reality Check:

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) of "DC Madame" fame, plans to amend the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to reinsert the 33 percent abstinence-only earmark.

Sen. Vitter, not exactly a model for abstinence, or being faithful, has the audacity to put his hypocritical ideology ahead of evidence-based public health strategies that tell us abstinence-only should be removed from PEPFAR. He puts ideology ahead of his own reality in the ultimate paternalistic perversion of "do as I say, not as I do."

    In the United States, approximately two-thirds of all high school seniors have engaged in sexual intercourse.1 According to the Department of Health and Human Services, approximately one in four persons will become infected with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) by the age of twenty-one.2 Additionally, the United States has one the highest rate of teenage pregnancy of any industrialized nation with about forty percent of woman becoming pregnant before the age of twenty.3 While there has been no conclusive evidence that abstinence-only based sexuality education programs either prevent the onset of intercourse or reduce the frequency of intercourse, the United States government currently finances three federal abstinence-until-marriage programs.4 By prohibiting State governments from promoting the use of contraceptives in their school sex education programs in order to receive Federal funding, the United States government is endangering the welfare of its citizens.  
    According to a report entitled “School-Based Programs to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors” commissioned by the Division of Adolescent and School Health within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Because incidence of pregnancy and STDs among teenagers is so great, these consequences involve not only the individuals involved and their families, but overall welfare dependency, unemployment, and medical costs in the United States.”5 In 2002, there were an estimated 750,000 pregnancies (450,000 live births) among 15-19 year old girls.6 With the proper use of a condom, chance of pregnancy can be reduced by 98%.7 Furthermore, sexually active teenagers have the greatest chance of becoming infected with an STD than any other age group.8 With about 9.1 million persons between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four being infected every year in the U.S., almost half of all new STD cases occur among young people.9 According to the CDC, at the end of 2003 somewhere between 1,039,000 and 1,850,000 people in the United States were living with HIV/AIDS.10 Of the approximately 40,000 new cases each year, about half occur with persons under twenty-five years old (usually infected through intercourse).11 With the use of a condom, the chance of infection from intercourse with a person with HIV-AIDS is reduced by 80 to 87%.12
    In 1981, Congress passed the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) “to promote chastity and self discipline” among adolescents by funding “family-centered” programs. The Act, sponsored largely by political conservatives, was used to almost exclusively fund religious and right wing groups that often maintain (without any significant scientific proof) that dissemination of safe sex practice information hastens the initiation of sexual activity and the frequency of intercourse among youths. Allegedly, many of these groups, including Sex Respect and Teen-Aid, relied on “scare-tactics” and misinformation about disease and pregnancy prevention in order to promote their abstinence-based initiatives. In 1983, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the program on the grounds that it violated the seperation of church and state as required by the U.S. Constitution. In 1993, the case between the challengers and the Department of Justice Counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) reached an agreement in which certain requirements must be met before the granting of funds through the AFLA to any sex education program. These stipulations include having AFLA grantees submit their curricula to the DHHS for  “consideration of whether the curricula teach or promote religion and whether such materials are medically accurate.”13
     A 2004 report from the office of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) found that two-thirds of government-funded abstinence-only programs contain misleading or inaccurate information pertaining to abortion, contraception, genetics, and sexually transmitted infections. The report prompted the Government Accountability Office to investigate the claims, releasing a report in 2006 supporting Waxman’s findings.14
    In 1996, Congress attached an additional abstinence-only Federal program to a welfare reform law. According to Title V of Section 510 of the Social Security Act, “Neither the State nor any of its sub-awardees may use Federal or matching funds under this award to promote the use of contraception.” All federally funded sex education programs must adhere to this requirement.15 Over $1.5 billion have been allocated to these federal and state programs since 1996. President Bush has requested $242 million for the funding of abstinence-only programs in his FY2008 budget. Since states are required to match federal funds for abstinence-only programs, some states are forced to divert money away from more comprehensive, medically accurate sex education programs. Eleven states have refused to accept such federal programs because of these terms.16
    In 2007, Congress authorized an extensive year-long study by the Mathematica Policy Research, Inc found that students who participated in federal abstinence-only programs were just as likely to engage in pre-marital sex as those students who did not. They were also found to engage in sexual-risk behaviors at the same mean age and have the same approximate number of sex partners as students who did not participate in the federally funded programs. Another study focusing on individuals engaged in virginity pledge programs (promoting chastity until marriage) found that, although many did delay the onset of sexual activity, many of these youths (88%) still engaged in premarital sex but were less likely than non-pledgers to use contraceptives at first intercourse or to get tested for STDs.17
    Relying on evaluations of twenty-three separate national surveys, the “School-Based Programs to Reduce Sexual Risk Behaviors” report by the CDC found that comprehensive school sex education programs covering topics such as abstinence, conception, pregnancy, STD, and HIV-AIDS did not lead to an increase in sexual activity. Programs designed to promote the use of contraceptives, such as condoms, also did not increase the onset or frequency of sexual activity. “Indeed, all of them either delayed the onset of intercourse or had no effect upon the initiation of intercourse. Furthermore, of the four studies that focused on program impact on the frequency of intercourse, none found significant increases in sexual activity, and one found a significant decrease among the relatively small proportion of youths who initiated intercourse after program implementation.”18
    It is estimated that only 10% of school districts in the U.S. have comprehensive sexuality programs that promote not just abstinence but the use of contraceptives and safe sex practices.19 The CDC “School-Based” report stated that two studies it analyzed indicated that some comprehensive programs reduce the onset of sexual activity, limit the number of sexual partners, and increase the use of contraceptives. “Logically they should also reduce pregnancy, births, STD, and HIV rates.”20 It is the responsibility of the American government to ensure the general welfare of its citizens. When the federal government blatantly disregards rigorous scientific data in order to promote ineffective morality-based sexuality programs in state school systems, that government can be held accountable for actually harming the lives of its citizens.

At least, that's the argument the conservative Family Research Council seems to be making. In an email sent to FRC members, Tony Perkins attacked Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's recent decision to cut off funding for abstinence only education -- which we know doesn't work. Interestingly enough, FRC is concerned about how this will affect the market, "The decision ... affects nearly 15 nonprofit programs ... Virginia's contraceptive-based, pro-adolescent-sex education programs will not be affected. In fact, most of them stand to profit substantially from the lack of competition. The most obvious beneficiary ... Planned Parenthood."

Wait, I'm confused. FRC is shocked that a program that is proved to not work is getting funding withdrawn from it and is claiming that the group that will profit is a nonprofit? Firstly, if they're so concerned with market values, then they shouldn't be so surprised when an ineffective program becomes unpopular and therefore gets less funding. Secondly, Planned Parenthood doesn't just do comprehensive sex education. They also provide prenatal care and regular pap smears to low income women where access to such health care is virtually nonexistent. In other words, Planned Parenthood provides a valuable service. Instead of subsidizing ineffective programs, we should work on funding programs that do work. Don't conseratives hate it when economics works against them?

According to Kaiser Network, New York has joined a list of 11 states to refuse federal abstinence-only education funds in the last few years. The state will reject about $3.5 million this year in favor of teaching comprehensive sex ed. This shows that states are actually deciding that abstenence-only education is doing more harm than good, so it's not worth it to accept the funding.

The article highlighted this gem from Leslie Unruh, who tried so hard to keep the South Dakota abortion ban in effect, "A lot of kids that are abstaining are made to feel as if they are from a Victorian age and they are not with the 'Sex and the City' crowd."

Shocker. The BBC reports today that a meta study (a kind of study of studies) published in the British Medical Journal showed that overall abstinence only education has no impact on the sexual lives of young people aged 10-21. The article said:

They found abstinence programmes had no negative or positive impact on the rates of sex infections or unprotected sex, the British Medical Journal said.

Abstinence programmes are popular in the US and have supporters in the UK.

The funny thing about this is the reporting. It's sort of reported with a "silly Americans and their attachment to abstinence education" attitude. It's true, though. For years Congress has been pouring money into such programs for years, and last month Congress even approved an increase in abstinence funding in exchange for more comprehensive sex education funding.

Among the scientific community, it's obvious that these programs just don't work. Additionally, I've always felt it reeked of moralizing to young people whose families may not share such conservative views on sex.

A day after I write a piece about making progress in the field of sexual health, I get bumped back two spaces. I take a bathroom break but something on the office TV stops me in my tracks en route from the cubicle to bladder relief.

In days where the federal government spends trillions of dollars, where it costs 6,300 dollars a second to conduct a war, and where it costs hundreds of millions just to run for president, we can become jaded about just what ten billion dollars looks like. I often imagine what I would do if I had ten billion dollars. I haven't decided on anything yet, but let's just say the idea of having a lifetime supply of tacos isn't out of the question. Near the bottom of that very long list in my mind is conducting any kind of abstinence campaign in Africa in an attempt to curb AIDS, (that campaign is number 42,123 on my list, just ahead of buying a lifetime supply of spagettiO's).

...at least, that's the situation for people who take abstinence pledges and the like. Apparently, they have sex too! From the Daily Illini:

WASHINGTON - Students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex a few years later as those who did not, according to a long-awaited study mandated by Congress.

Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes, and they first had sex at about the same age as their control group counterparts _ 14 years and nine months, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc. ...