There are other realities that birth control advocates overlook as well. Many teenaged girls do not choose to have sex because their raging hormones overwhelm their good judgment. Many do so because the whole culture, very much including the schools, seems to be pushing them into it. Here is a letter from a reader: "I wish it had been taught or even talked about in my high school ... In 1977 I didn't want to have sex (but) you were considered sort of frigid or not grown up if you didn't go along with what everyone else was doing ... I needed something, anything to point to as a good reason not to (other than my parents) "
According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly 30 percent of sexually active teens said they felt pressured into having sex. Ten percent reported having been physically forced to have sex.
There are studies all over the map on the question of whether abstinence-only education works or not. The Best Friends Foundation program boasts impressive statistics over 15 years for keeping teen girls away from sex, drugs, and alcohol. A study using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found a strong correlation between abstinence and school success (even controlling for factors like family structure, wealth, and race).
Over the past two decades, as more and more school systems have implemented abstinence programs, the rate of teen pregnancy has declined. The number of high school students who say they are virgins has increased, and the abortion rate has dropped. Is all of this good news due to abstinence-only programs? It's a complex subject and the evidence remains inconclusive. And clearly any school abstinence message is practically drowned out by the vulgar and licentious culture all around us. Still, we may be slowly climbing out of the hole we've dug for ourselves. The last thing we should be doing is declaring abstinence education a failure.