A pair of officials with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defended abstinence education programs in a recent opinion piece. The goal of such programs is to delay teens’ introduction to sexual activity, they wrote, noting that reliable statistics indicate that’s exactly what it takes to reduce teen pregnancies.
Wade Horn, assistant secretary for Children and Families within HHS, and Jeffrey Trimbath, director of abstinence education at the HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, wrote “Another Reason for Abstinence,” which was posted on the government’s Children and Families website this summer.
They cite a study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
“Through education, mentoring, counseling and peer support, abstinence education services help teens delay the onset of sexual activity and reduce the number of sexual partners they have,” Horn and Trimbath wrote.
The duo said more teens are adopting abstinence as their personal standard, and they used statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make their point.
“According to the CDC, the percentage of teens who report that they have had sex has decreased from 54 percent in the early 1990s to 46 percent today,” Horn and Trimbath wrote. “Just a few short years ago, a majority of teens did not practice abstinence. Now, a majority of teens are abstinent. It just so happens that these trends coincide with increased funding for abstinence education from Washington. Coincidence? We think not.”
Horn and Trimbath also cited an HHS report from 2005 which found that teens who participated in federally funded abstinence programs showed an “increased awareness of the risks associated with teen sexual behavior and an increased acceptance of delaying sexual behavior.”
Richard Ross, co-founder of the True Love Waits abstinence movement, told Baptist Press that “secular abstinence programs rely entirely on the will of the student,” whereas True Love Waits “places the power of God front and center.”
“On every page of curriculum for TLW, we hold high the power of God to call a student to purity and the power of God to keep that promise,” Ross added.
“Secular abstinence programs often provide little community and support around a student who will face temptation. But in the Christian community, youth groups and families surround True Love Waits teenagers with continuing support and encouragement,” Ross noted. “This positive peer support -, plus accountability with the family and church, together create a powerful force toward purity.”