Comprehensive Sex Education: Facts and Messages

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As an advocate for comprehensive sexuality education, it is helpful to keep a few handy statistics at your fingertips and make sure you express your personal point of view in the most effective way possible. Here are a few important facts as well as messaging suggestions to help frame your position on this important issue.

The Facts

• Each year, U.S. teens experience as many as 850,000 pregnancies, [1,2] 82% of which are unintended. [3]
• 31% of young women become pregnant at least once before the age of 20. [4]
• Each year U.S. youth under age 25 experience about 9.1 million sexually transmitted infections (STIs). [1,2]
• By age 18, 70 percent of U.S. females and 62 percent of U.S. males have initiated vaginal sex. [5]
• 95 percent of Americans have sex before marriage. [6]

Abstinence-Only Programs Are Dangerous, Inaccurate
No abstinence-only-until-marriage program has been shown to help teens delay the initiation of sex or to protect themselves when they do initiate sex.[11,12,14] Yet, the U.S. government has spent over 1.5 billion dollars supporting abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. [15]

Comprehensive Sex Education Is Effective
Comprehensive sex education has been proven to help young people protect themselves. It has been shown to help young people wait longer to have sex, have sex less frequently, have fewer partners, and use condoms and/or contraception more when they do have sex. [6,7,9] Comprehensive sex ed programs have also resulted in lower STD and/or teen pregnancy rates. [7,8,9,10]

Federal funding mandates prohibit educating youth about the benefits of condoms and contraception [15] and, therefore, no highly effective sex education or HIV prevention education program is eligible. Comprehensive sex education and HIV/ STI prevention programs do not increase rates of sexual initiation, do not lower the age at which youth initiate sex, and do not increase the frequency of sex or the number of sex partners among sexually active youth. [7,8,10,17,18]


Support for Comprehensive Sex Education
The American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, American Medical Association, American Public Health Association, Institute of Medicine, and Society for Adolescent Medicine support comprehensive sex education, including education about both abstinence and contraception and condoms. [1,13,14,27,28]

89 percent of American adults believed that it is important for young people to have information about contraception and prevention of STIs and that sex education should focus on how to avoid unintended pregnancy and STIs, including HIV. [29]

94 percent of adults and 93 percent of parents said that sex education should cover contraception. Only 15 percent of Americans wanted abstinence-only-until-marriage education taught in the classroom. [30]

Effective Sex Education
Effective comprehensive sex education programs are honest, medically accurate, complete, age-appropriate and culturally sensitive. These programs are developed in cooperation with members of the community, especially young people. They assist youth to clarify their individual, family, and community values and help them to develop skills in communication, refusal, and negotiation. They provide medically accurate information about abstinence and contraception, including condoms. [7,8,9,10,11,17] As people of faith, we believe it is a moral imperative to provide children and teens with all the information they need to make responsible and informed decisions about their health.

Add Your Voice
While facts and figures give you credibility, your personal point of view or story is what people will remember! Here are a few ways to get started when talking about how you feel about comprehensive sex education.

As a person of faith, I believe…

Young people need information about both abstinence and contraception. It is our moral duty to provide them with potentially life-saving information.

I support sex education that respects the whole person, honors diverse values, and promotes the highest ethical values in human relationships. Comprehensive sex education allows young people to make responsible, informed decisions about their sexual health.

Education that respects and empowers young people has more integrity than education based on incomplete information and messages of fear and shame.

Comprehensive sex education honors the diversity in religious and moral values represented in a community.

References
1. Klein JD & Committee on Adolescence. Adolescent pregnancy: current trends and issues. Pediatrics 2005; 116(1):281-286.
2. Weinstock H et al. Sexually transmitted diseases among American youth: incidence and prevalence estimates, 2000. Perspectives on Reproductive & Sexual Health 2004; 36(1):6-10.
3. Guttmacher Institute, Facts on Sex Education in the United States,12/2006, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_sexEd2006.html, accessed Oct. 19,2007.
4. Guttmacher Institute, Facts on Sex Education in the United States,12/2006, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_sexEd2006.html, accessed Oct. 19,2007.
5. Mosher WD et al. Sexual behavior and selected health measures: men and women, 15-44 years of age, United States, 2002. Advance Data 2005; #362:1-56.
6. Wind R. Premarital sex is nearly universal among Americans, and has been for decades. Guttmacher Institute. 2006. Available at http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2006/12/19/index.html, Accessed June 18, 2008.
7. Kirby D. Emerging Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy. Washington, DC: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2001.
8. Kirby D et al. Impact of Sex and HIV Education Programs on Sexual Behaviors of Youth in Developing and Developed Countries. [Youth Research Working Paper, No. 2] Research Triangle Park, NC: Family Health International, 2005.
9. Alford S. Science and Success: Sex Education and Other Programs that Work to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, HIV & Sexually Transmitted Infections. Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth, 2003.
10. Alford S. Science and Success: Programs that Work to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, HIV & Sexually Transmitted Infections. [vol. 3] Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth [in press].
11. Santelli J et al. Abstinence and abstinence-only education: a review of U.S. policies and programs. Journal of Adolescent Health 2006; 38(1):72-81.
12. Hauser D. Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact [Title V State Evaluations] Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth, 2004.
13. Committee on HIV Prevention Strategies in the United States, Institute of Medicine. No Time to Lose: Getting More from HIV Prevention. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000.
14. Society for Adolescent Medicine. Abstinence-only education policies and programs: a position paper of the Society for Adolescent Medicine. Journal of Adolescent Health 2006; 38(1):83-87.
15. SIECUS. SIECUS State Profiles: a Portrait of Sexuality Education and Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs in the States. New York: Author, 2004.
16. American Foundation for AIDS Research. Assessing the Efficacy of Abstinence-Only Programs for HIV Prevention among Young People. [Issue Brief, no. 2] Washington, DC: Author, 2005.
17. UNAIDS. Impact of HIV and Sexual Health Education on the Sexual Behaviour of Young People: a Review Update. Geneva, Switzerland: UNAIDS, 1997.
18. Baldo M et al. Does Sex Education Lead to Earlier or Increased Sexual Activity in Youth? Presented at the Ninth International Conference on AIDS, Berlin, 1993. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 1993.
19. Martin JA et al. Births: final data for 2003. National Vital Statistics Reports 2005; 54(2):1-116.
20. Hamilton BE et al. Births: preliminary data for 2004. National Vital Statistics Reports 2005; 54(8):1-16.
21. Darroch JE, Singh S. Why Is Teenage Pregnancy Declining? The Roles of Abstinence, Sexual Activity, and Contraceptive Use [Occasional Report 1] New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1999.
22. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Halfway There: a Prescription for Continued Progress in Preventing Teen Pregnancy. Washington, DC: Author, 2001.
23. Brückner H, Bearman P. After the promise: the STD consequences of adolescent virginity pledges. Journal of Adolescent Health 2005; 36:271-278.
24. Bearman PS, Brückner H. Promising the future: virginity pledges and first intercourse. American Journal of Sociology 2001; 106(4):859-912.
25. Feijoo AN, Grayton C. Trends in Sexual Risk Behaviors among High School Students—United States, 1991 to 1997 and 1999 to 2003. [The Facts] Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth, 2004.
26. Special Investigations Division, U. S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs. Washington, DC: Author, 2004.
27. _____. Report of the Council on Scientific Affairs [Action of the AMA House of Delegates, CSA Report 7-I-99] Chicago, IL: American Medical Association, 1999.
28. Boostra H. Legislators craft alternative vision of sex education to counter abstinence-only drive. The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy 2002; #2:1-3.
29. Hickman-Brown Public Opinion Research. Public Support for Sexuality Education Reaches Highest Levels. Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth, 1999.
30. National Public Radio et al. Sex Education in America: NPR/Kaiser/Kennedy School Poll. Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser, 2004.
31. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, General Facts and Stats, http://www.teenpregnancy.org/resources/data/national.asp, accessed 10/19/07.