On July 5th the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced its official opposition to abstinence education despite its effectiveness in preventing teen pregnancies. The new AAP policy reverses a previous statement, adopted in 1998, saying "abstinence counseling is an important role for all pediatricians.'' The AAP now says "teenagers should instead be taught about birth control and given access to the morning after pill" and has issued new guidelines to that effect.

Dr. Jonathan Klein, chairman of the AAP committee that wrote the new guidelines, said "Even though there is great enthusiasm in some circles for abstinence-only interventions, the evidence does not support abstinence-only interventions as the best way to keep young people from unintended pregnancy."

These sorts of statements are rooted in philosophical commitments and not fact and leave the public confused and uncertain about the proper approach to sex education. First they inaccurately imply that "abstinence-only" education "blindly refuses to teach contraception" in the words of NY Times columnist, Nicholas Kristoff and therefore naively ignore the real possibility of teen sexual activity.

Second, Dr. Klein's statement indicates that "abstinence-only" education has been faithfully tried but alas has been found wanting. The AAP is essentially saying that it is time to take sex education back from those well-intended but naive do "do-gooders" and return it to the realm of science where it belongs and thus abandon those inane and archaic moral associations with sex education.

The fact is there is no such thing as "abstinence-only" education. Abstinence-centered education most certainly does emphasize pre-marital abstinence as the most effective means of protection against STDs and unplanned pregnancies. (One might assume that a medical Doctor would know that not actually having sex is "the best way to keep young people from unintended pregnancy.") Abstinence-centered education does teach kids about contraception quite thoroughly however, what irritates the proponents of what could better be called "contraception-only" education is that it teaches the scientific facts about the risks of reliance upon contraceptive methods. Contrary to these public statements abstinence-centered education does not exclude factual information about contraception.

Upon examining the curriculum in use today, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation points out that "True abstinence curricula devote, on average, 71 percent of their page content to abstinence. In contrast, comprehensive or so-called 'Safe-sex' curricula, on average, allocate only 4.7 percent of their content to abstinence; the overwhelming focus is on encouraging teens to use contraception... The principal message that pervades comprehensive sex education curricula, through repeated example, is that it is okay for teens to have sex as long as they use contraception."