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Teen abstinence vows get so-so results
Pledge doesn't cut rate of disease, study says
March 10, 2004
FREE PRESS NEWS SERVICES
PHILADELPHIA -- Teens who make a onetime pledge to remain virgins until marriage catch sexually transmitted diseases about as often as those who don't pledge abstinence, according to a study of the sex lives of 12,000 adolescents.
But a pledge to refrain from premarital sex, the researchers found, did tend to delay the start of sexual intercourse by 18 months. The adolescents who took virginity pledges also married earlier and had fewer sex partners than the other teenagers surveyed, said Dr. Peter Bearman, the chairman of the sociology department at Columbia University and the lead author of the study.
Of the 12,000 teenagers included in the federal study, 88 percent of those who pledged chastity reported having had sexual intercourse before they married, Bearman said at a scientific meeting in Philadelphia.
The researchers tested the participants for three common sexually transmitted infections -- chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis -- and found that the rates were almost identical for the teenagers who took pledges and those who did not.
Yet the teens who had taken pledges were less likely to know they had an infection, raising the risk of their transmitting it to other people, said Bearman and Hannah Brueckner of Yale University, the other author of the report.
Bearman said that telling teenagers "to 'Just say no,' without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk, turns out to create greater risk" of sexually transmitted diseases.
Data from the study came from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. That study was funded in part by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study first questioned 12- to 18-year-olds and followed up on them six years later.
Critics of abstinence-only education saw the findings as evidence that adolescents benefit from sex education.
"It's a tragedy if we withhold from these kids information about how not to get STDs or not to get pregnant," said Dorothy Mann, executive director of the Family Planning Council, an organization backing reproductive health services.
Pledge doesn't cut rate of disease, study says
March 10, 2004
FREE PRESS NEWS SERVICES
PHILADELPHIA -- Teens who make a onetime pledge to remain virgins until marriage catch sexually transmitted diseases about as often as those who don't pledge abstinence, according to a study of the sex lives of 12,000 adolescents.
But a pledge to refrain from premarital sex, the researchers found, did tend to delay the start of sexual intercourse by 18 months. The adolescents who took virginity pledges also married earlier and had fewer sex partners than the other teenagers surveyed, said Dr. Peter Bearman, the chairman of the sociology department at Columbia University and the lead author of the study.
Of the 12,000 teenagers included in the federal study, 88 percent of those who pledged chastity reported having had sexual intercourse before they married, Bearman said at a scientific meeting in Philadelphia.
The researchers tested the participants for three common sexually transmitted infections -- chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis -- and found that the rates were almost identical for the teenagers who took pledges and those who did not.
Yet the teens who had taken pledges were less likely to know they had an infection, raising the risk of their transmitting it to other people, said Bearman and Hannah Brueckner of Yale University, the other author of the report.
Bearman said that telling teenagers "to 'Just say no,' without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk, turns out to create greater risk" of sexually transmitted diseases.
Data from the study came from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. That study was funded in part by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study first questioned 12- to 18-year-olds and followed up on them six years later.
Critics of abstinence-only education saw the findings as evidence that adolescents benefit from sex education.
"It's a tragedy if we withhold from these kids information about how not to get STDs or not to get pregnant," said Dorothy Mann, executive director of the Family Planning Council, an organization backing reproductive health services.
those horny bastards.
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