I’m pissed at SFGate right now (more on that later), but you really need to read this article that went up today, about abstinence aid, who gets (and refuses) all that money, and what a chilling joke this whole thing has become. Our kids are in trouble. Snips:
“More than $1 billion in federal aid has been poured into state-run abstinence-only programs in the past decade after the Bush administration decided there was an imbalance that favored comprehensive sex education and slighted abstinence. State school systems accepting the federal money are required to teach that sexual activity outside marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects, and that a married, monogamous relationship is the expected standard.
California is one of only three states — the others are Maine and Pennsylvania — to refuse the federal education funding tied to abstinence.
(…) Community-based programs in California do receive abstinence-only funds from a separate federal funding stream established in 2000. Await & Find gets $800,000 a year in Community-Based Abstinence Education Program funding — the highest amount awarded to any California nonprofit.
(…) In November, the Bush administration appointed a new abstinence-friendly chief of family planning at the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Eric Keroack had been medical director at a Massachusetts pregnancy counseling organization whose Web site states: ‘The crass commercialization and distribution of birth control is demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality, and adverse to human health and happiness.’
The administration also has budgeted another $241.5 million for abstinence-only programs in 2007.” Link.
Update: An anonymous reader emails me saying, “I read your post today about Federal Funding for abstinence-only sex ed. Dr. Dora Mills is a friend of ours, she was the person responsible for making the decision to refuse Federal funding. This decision has had a huge, positive impact on our State. Maine has gone from having one of the highest teen pregnancy rates to one of the lowest. (Third lowest in the country.)”
