The first state-funded evaluation of the impact of the US abstinence-only approach to sex education in Texas has found that more teenagers were sexually active after taking the program than before it. The evaluation, which involved surveying all students at 29 Texas high schools, found that while 23% of ninth-grade girls were sexually active before they took the program, 29% became so afterwards. For 10th-grade boys, the percentage went from 24% to 39%. These trends were similar across all year levels, and both genders. Dr Buzz Pruitt, contracted to run the study, told the January 29 Dallas News that the results indicated the programs had no effect at all. In order to get federal funding, sex education programs in the US must not mention birth control, except to provide information about contraceptive failure rates, and must”as its exclusive purpose, teach the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity”. The researchers were unable to contrast the results to students receiving comprehensive sex education because they could not find a group big enough.

From Green Left Weekly, February 9, 2005.
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