Obama
Blocks Study Showing Abstinence Education
Works
The
Obama administration is, once again, entangled
in controversy over sex education. Yet this
time, it is not about what the administration
is trying to implement, but about what it is
withholding – and apparently for political
reasons. A
taxpayer-funded study that indicates parental
and adolescent support of abstinence education
is not being released by the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS), as it does
not support the administration’s objective
– or that of vocal “safe sex” activists
– of eliminating all abstinence-education
funding. The
Administration for Children and Families (ACF),
a division of HHS, funded a survey of 1,000
adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 and
their parents, in order to measure
parent-adolescent communication and adolescent
attitudes toward sex and abstinence. The
American Public Health Association’s (APHA)
website reveals the results of the study:
“Adjusting for all
other factors in the model, parent and peer
factors are more consistently associated with
differences in adolescent attitudes about sex
and abstinence than are measures of adolescent
exposure to sex and abstinence topics in a
class or program. Additionally,
parent attitudes are more important in
influencing adolescent views than the level of
parent communication with their adolescent.”