Late last week Buzzfeed Newsreported that President Donald Trump’s new government-sponsored Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs will favor abstinence-only education, and compares the ‘risk’ of sex to things like drug use or not wearing a seatbelt.
This comes as the administration completely overhauls the Obama-era grants that tried to move away from the abstinence-only approach. In order to receive government funding, programs muse focus on “sexual risk avoidance” and “sexual risk education,” Buzzfeed reported.
The #TrumpAdmin is ignoring research and the needs of young people by favoring abstinence only programs. If we want to prevent teen pregnancy, we need #EvidenceBased comprehensive sex education, not an ideological agenda. #teenhealth#reprohealthhttps://t.co/Kg9CTSgs6g
— Suzanne Bonamici (@RepBonamici) April 24, 2018
This new grant ends the Obama-era ones two years early, Teen Vogue adds. The Trump administration says that they plan to continue the grants, but they want to make sure that abstinence is the priority.
The guidelines for the grant said that abstinence-based education was the “natural approach for an emphasis on sexual delay,” according to Teen Vogue.
Notably, abstinence-only education has been tied to increased teen pregnancy rates and there is no professional peer-review journal that found this type of sex ed to be effective.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual health research organization, "programs that promote abstinence-only-until-marriage—now termed 'sexual risk avoidance' by proponents—have been described as 'scientifically and ethically problematic.' They systematically ignore or stigmatize many young people and do not meet their health needs... Proponents of 'sexual risk avoidance' programs have appropriated the terms 'medically accurate' and 'evidence-based,' though experts in the field agree that such programs are neither complete in their medical accuracy nor based on the widely accepted body of scientific evidence."
Additionally, Guttmacher notes that comprehensive sex education programs "that include information about both contraception and abstinence help young people to delay sex, and also to have healthy relationships and avoid STDs and unintended pregnancies when they do become sexually active. Many of these programs have resulted in delayed sexual debut, reduced frequency of sex and number of sexual partners, increased condom or contraceptive use, or reduced sexual risk-taking."