No real surprise here, but you can expect that the Pills and Rubbers people will be launching propaganda soon.
Abstinence education is "crucial to the physical and psycho-emotional well-being of the nation's youth," concludes a detailed report released by the Heritage Foundation.
The report, "Abstinence Education: Assessing the Evidence", released yesterday, examines 21 studies of abstinence education programs, and concludes that statistics show that abstinence programs are effective in deterring teens from becoming sexually active, thereby reducing the risk of STDs, teen prengnacy, etc.
...The Heritage Foundation report ... demonstrates that a majority of abstinence programs have reported a statistically significant decrease in levels of sexual activity for students who participate in them.
Of 15 sex-ed programs that primarily taught abstinence, 11 reported positive findings, while of 6 "virginity pledge" programs, 5 reported positive findings.
More important:
Abstinence programs, observes the report, are admirable in that they are not only about sexual behavior, but "also provide youths with valuable life and decision-making skills that lay the foundation for personal responsibility and developing healthy relationships and marriages later in life."
...in other words, the virtues of integrity, responsibility, treating others as people, not objects....
No wonder the Democrat Party objects!
I'm reading Dawn Eden's "The Thrill of the Chaste", which raises a good point:
ReplyDeleteAbstinence-only programs work when kids are taught exactly why abstinece is so important. And it Just. Makes. Sense.
No one has ever contracted an STD or found themselves unexpectedly pregnant who practiced abstinence.
And, surely, no one has ever died from not having sex.
Among the many spectacular and beautiful things Papa Benedict said during his visit with us last week were these wonderful words addressed to Catholic educators gathered at CU:
ReplyDeleteWe witness an assumption that every experience is of equal worth and a reluctance to admit imperfection and mistakes. And particularly disturbing, is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of 'risk', bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love.
The Pope wisely notes that context is everything; "sex-ed" placed apart from a programme that would include challenges to cultivate human dignity and virtue reduces behavior to the merely "pragmatic" instead of the ennobling.
God bless Pope Benedict. What a gift to the Church!
No unexpectedly pregnant virgins? And I thought you were Christian.
ReplyDeleteAnd love is not all?