It happens all the time –– when Congress begins drafting appropriations bills dealing with the funding of sex education, the left starts undermining abstinence programs. The federal government disproportionately supports those sex education programs prominently featuring condom distribution from Planned Parenthood and other organizations that argue: "Teens are going to have sex anyway, so the best response is to teach teens to protect themselves and encourage them to practice ‘safe' sex." In fact, for every $12 spent on condom-based programs, only $1 is spent funding abstinence programs. Yet when appropriations hearings are held, you can count on well-timed research being released to "prove" that the few and relatively new abstinence programs don't work. The left vehemently argues that the government is throwing money away to support abstinence programs. Translation: All the federal money should go to the groups promoting "safe sex" through the use of condoms.

Often, the attacks are extreme and partisan. For instance, this weekend, the media, including the Washington Post, gave considerable attention to a 20-page document from The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Advocates for Youth and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) that simply regurgitated previous attacks on three abstinence programs. The letter criticized statistics from a 1993 program and attacked a program no longer published and one that has been updated and revised. Obviously, such unfounded criticism puts a political agenda before honest evaluation –– never mind students' well-being.

Last week, Mathematica Policy Research Inc. released a study of abstinence programs that was widely disseminated even though it was a very limited study –– only four early abstinence programs –– and was based on flawed methodology. The targeted children were in abstinence programs at age 9-11 and had no follow-up before being evaluated when they were 15-16 years of age.

The misleading Mathematica study made headlines in all media. An alarmist MSNBC report was headlined, "Blind faith on sex-ed approach puts kids at risk." The politically-motivated subheading declared, "Bullheaded Bush administration puts abstinence ideology before lives." The Christian Science Monitor put a positive headline on a very negative article. The headline: "Honesty about abstinence-only: To confront the apparent failures of these programs is not to give up on teen abstinence as a standard [emphasis added]." In spite of the headline, however, the article used 13 paragraphs to explain how abstinence programs have produced "zero effect. That's right: zero."

Common sense tells you that you're not likely to find something that you're determined not to see. One study of a D.C.-area program found that girls in the abstinence program were seven times less likely to engage in sexual activity than those who were not in the program. Common sense also says that something has been at work to bring down the rates of sexual activity by teens over the last 15 years. That "something at work" certainly isn't the liberal sex education bilge that has polluted the minds of teens for the last 40-50 years; the "sex is no big deal" and "sex-without-consequences" agendas of such "education" programs are hard to distinguish from the ones pushed by Hugh Hefner at Playboy. Those agendas produced unprecedented rates of teen sexual activity, out-of-wedlock births and abortions.

Yet frequently truth breaks through the darkness of lies and distortion. Truth can even spotlight the fallacies in special-interest agendas.

For instance, the Journal of Research on Adolescence just published the results of a survey covering 1,052 inner-city adolescents. A team of pediatricians at New York City's Albert Einstein College of Medicine conducted the research and found that abstinent students have a stronger academic profile, while those who engage in sexual experimentation are more likely to exhibit academic and behavioral pathologies. The non-abstinent students were more likely to earn low grades, drop out of high school and experiment with drug and alcohol use. The Einstein scholars identified the "co-occurrence of substance abuse and dropping out of school with sexual activity" as a "problem behavior syndrome."

Abstinence programs don't as yet have a long track record; they've only been in place a few years, and only recently have they seen widespread use in schools across the nation. There aren't that many evaluations of the programs available, though 12 studies indicate remarkable effectiveness.

The big story, however, is the trends revealed in the official data indicating dramatic and remarkable demographic changes that coincide with the broader use of abstinence-only programs across the nation. Official government statistics show reversals in trend lines that were resistant to change prior to the availability of abstinence-only programs. These data are available, but hardly anyone is paying attention; certainly, the following three trends aren't making the headlines –– and they should.

TEEN SEXUAL ACTIVITY IS DOWN

The Centers for Disease Control reports that teen sexual activity has decreased; the downturn is especially dramatic among black teens –– dropping from 81.4 percent in 1991 to 67.6 percent in 2005 (see Figure 1 below). Among Hispanics, the drop is relatively small but in the right direction –– from 53.1 to 51.0. Among whites, the reversal of the trend is important because the number has stayed below 50 percent since the mid-90s and now is at 43.0 percent.

The downward trends in three population groups represent documented changes in teen behavior — even with a slight blip upward in the early 2000s, rates are still well below that of the early 1990s.

Why would we go back to programs that encourage students to engage in behavior that we know is risky — behaviors that the Einstein pediatricians indicate produce "problem behavior syndrome"?

TEEN BIRTHRATES ARE DOWN

Between 1940 and 1954, the unwed birthrate for teens (15-19 years old) doubled; it doubled again by 1984, and increased another 50 percent before peaking in 1994. Since 1994, however — and in defiance of everyone's expectations — unwed teen birthrates have steadily followed a downward trend. The National Vital Statistics Report reveals that (based on preliminary data for 2005), teen birthrates are down by 25 percent since 1994.

The unwed birthrate for younger teens (15-17) declined by 12 per thousand since 1994, while the rate for older teens (18-19) declined by 11 per thousand. The older teen drop is particularly significant because from 1974-1994 their unwed birthrate paralleled the rate for unmarried early 20s women. After 1994, though, the older teen rate dropped while that of the unmarried early 20s continued to climb (though at a slower rate than in the 1980s).

It is worth repeating that this reversal of trend in the unwed teen birthrate stands in sharp contrast to the fact that the unwed birthrate for women in their 20s has continued to go up –– for unmarried women 20-24, a 5 percent increase from 1994 to 2005 and among unmarried women 25-29, an astounding 25 percent increase!

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