You may or may not have heard about the little tempest in a teapot from ex-surgeon general Richard Carmona. ("Ex-surgeon general faults White House").
Dr. Carmono claims he was censored by the White House, prevented from talking about science for political reasons.
At one point, he told a congressional committee he had run "afoul of politics on teen pregnancy prevention. Although the administration emphasizes abstinence from sexual relations, Carmona said he believed a variety of approaches was needed, including contraception for teens who are sexually active."
According to Carmona, the administration "'did not want to hear the science … but wanted to preach abstinence, which I felt was scientifically incorrect,'" Carmona testified."
I never did do that well in science, myself. But I'd love to see the experiment that illustrates how sexual abstinence, if the object is teen pregnancy prevention, can be a "scientifically incorrect" method.
I've done a quick look on the internet, but couldn't find the actual full quote from Dr. Carmona (I am interested in reading what those ellipses between "science" and "but" are hiding). My suspicion is that he was referring not to "abstinence" itself but to abstinence-only sex education programs, which studies have found to be unsuccessful in preventing teen pregnancy: http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/abstinencereport.asp
ReplyDeleteSure, abstinence works when teens actually abstain. Abstinence-only education, one could argue, does not reflect the reality of teenagers' experiences with sex and does not equip them to make informed choices about birth control, non-intercourse sexual options, etc.