Wave Abstinence Education Good-bye

Rachel Wagley / July 24, 2009

The FY10 Labor-HHS Appropriations bill heads to the House floor today. The Appropriations Committee approved this annual spending bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education last week. While the appropriation includes funds for programs to “help at-risk women and teens bear healthy children,” it eliminates funding for abstinence education and conspicuously disavows the very means to ensure that teens will not become pregnant in the first place.

Removal of abstinence-only education funding was not entirely unexpected after Congress let the only other source of abstinence funding expire in June. But the increasing unwed birthrate and a current federal spending ratio of 12:1 favoring “safe sex” and contraception education programs over abstinence education would seem to call for programs that have proven effective, rather than more of the same. (more…)