Abstaining from sexual activity is a surefire way to prevent pregnancy and avoid sexually transmitted diseases. But programs advocating abstinence often fail to prevent young people from having sex, researchers write in the September issue of the
Journal of Adolescent Health.
Such programs, sometimes referred to as "abstinence only until marriage" programs, typically advocate monogamous, heterosexual marriage as the only appropriate context for sexual intercourse and as the only certain way to avoid unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
That's "not just unrealistic, but it leaves our young people without the information and skills that they need," said
Laura Lindberg, a coauthor of
the report and a research scientist at the
Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group that supports abortion rights. "We fail our young people when we don't provide them with complete and medically accurate information."
The analysis confirms previous public health findings that abstinence-only education programs don't succeed in reducing rates of teen pregnancies or STDs. Moreover, public health data indicate that such programs "have little demonstrated efficacy in helping adolescents to delay intercourse," the authors write.
When American teens do begin having sex, they may fail to use condoms or other forms of contraception, unlike their peers in other countries who have routine access to contraceptive education and counseling, the report suggests.
Promoting abstinence until marriage as the only legitimate option for young people "violates medical ethics and harms young people," Lindberg says, because such programs generally withhold information about pregnancy and STD prevention and overstate the risk of contraceptive failure.
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