The recent report from the Administration for Children and Families defends abstinence-only programs by attacking comprehensive sexuality education.

By William Smith, SIECUS.

Senator Tom Coburn must have felt like a champ last week.  He released his own missive on the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), claiming in the title of the document that the CDC's "wasteful" spending indicated a "CDC Off Center." The 114 pages of that report have consumed more paper and staff time in its creation than it is worth.  Until the CDC comes fully into line with Dr. Coburn's vision of fiscal restraint and public health strained through an ideological sieve, such diatribes make for amusing reading.  I was pleased to see that yours truly made the cut when Coburn retold the story of how I got booted from a peer-reviewed panel at the national STD conference. I was tossed out because I was actually going to question the public health rationale for abstinence-only-until-marri age programs--of course, that's not exactly how Coburn told the story. Amusingly, the CDC ended up picking up the last minute tab for the goofs brought in to replace me--of course the report didn't mention that.

 

By Tyler LePard

Despite repeated scientific proof that abstinence-only programs don't work, the Administration on Children and Families (ACF) and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB)--program offices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)--recently announced a grant to the Medical Institute for Sexual Health to develop online abstinence training programs. This $207,400 grant qualifies as technical assistance from the Abstinence Education Division of FYSB in order to integrate "medical and scientific information into abstinence education programming."

   

According to their website, the Medical Institute for Sexual Health (MI) is a credible scientific organization interested in public health:

 

"MI was founded to confront the global epidemics of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). We identify and evaluate scientific information on sexual health and promote healthy sexual decisions and behaviors by communicating credible scientific information."

 

However, their focus on abstinence, to the exclusion of important health aspects of comprehensive sex ed shows, that they value ideology over sound public health. The Medical Institute plays up the failure rate of contraception and opposes mandating the HPV vaccine (despite acknowledging HPV as the most common sexually transmitted infection).  Additionally, SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) features the Medical Institute in their National Opponents of Comprehensive Sexuality.

Population Action International's latest documentary "Abstaining from Reality: U.S. Restrictions on HIV Prevention" provides a compelling snapshot of the Bush administration's abstinence-only approach to global HIV prevention.  A short preview of the article is posted here. Watch the eye-opening documentary short that accompanies Tamar Abrams' full story on eye-opening documentary short that accompanies Tamar Abrams' story on RHRealityCheck.org.

By Cynthia Rothschild

Usually when we think of the HIV pandemic, we think of one big health crisis, and a lot of "mini-pandemics" under its umbrella, many of which are based in social "ills" of some sort.  Crises in immigration.  Under-resourced or even failing health care systems.  Millions of kids who have or will lose their parents to AIDS.   But we too infrequently think of HIV as part of another pandemic -  that of the universal and seemingly un-abating crisis of gender-based violence (GBV)  And, more to the point here, we (I understand this "we" to be quite broad: activists, policymakers, researchers, academics, health care providers, teachers, etc.)  - "we" writ large - have not paid close enough attention to the ways these social and health crises are linked.  HIV and gender-based violence, and violence against women in particular, are mutually reinforcing.  In too many circumstances, they invent each other, as cause and consequence.

A-B-S-T-I-N-E-N-C-E = B-A-L-O-N-E-Y

   The Romney administration plans to introduce a new abstinence education program in Massachusetts schools beginning next month, the state's most aggressive effort yet to use a controversial method of teaching Bay State teenagers about sex.

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