Another Family Research Council piece:
On Townhall.com today [note: this was written earlier this month —eje], Jennifer Roback Morse, author of Smart Sex: Finding True Love in a Hook-Up World, deftly and succinctly demonstrates how futile federally funded comprehensive sex education is for its target audience. The common number that is touted as evidence for the success of contraceptives is close to 90%. Ms. Roback Morse looks deeper and discovers that this number is more representative among married women in their 30's and 40's. Within this group, only 3% of these women became pregnant while using the contraceptive pill. Nearly 50% however, of low-income co-habitating teenage girls become pregnant while using the contraceptive pill and over 70% become pregnant while using condoms. These are the numbers coming from the demographic the federal government is specifically targeting. The percentage of pregnancies that occur from abstinence is 0%. Despite this discrepancy in favor of abstinence, the federal government, Ms. Roback Morse states, spends $12 in contraceptive/condom education for every $1 in abstinence-only education. What is perhaps the most intriguing about this research is that the numbers come from Planned Parenthood. The very organization that aggressively advocates the use of contraceptives admits that their methods are at best feeble for their target audience. The federal government should look at these numbers and then focus its efforts on the inevitable success of abstinence instead of the inevitable failure of contraceptives.
