Abortion advocates and “comprehensive” sex educators are ready to pounce. In April 2007 Mathemetica Policy Research, Inc. released a flawed study that claims abstinence programs are not effective. With more abortion supporters in Congress and state legislatures, the demand to defund abstinence education became louder. Some states have actually rejected Federal abstinence funds, claiming that the requirements for using these funds are “not medically accurate and endanger children.” Most parents can recognize that such thinking reverses reality, but pro-abortion politicians are not willing to listen to reason.

If anyone is willing to ask the tough questions, they will find that the basic design of the Mathematica study was flawed from its conception. The study targeted children who were in abstinence programs from ages 9-11. There was no follow-up to this original abstinence message. After five years, those children were evaluated, and the conclusion was reached that abstinence does not work.

Numerous studies have shown the effectiveness of abstinence programs, but none of those studies were of interest to the major media or to “comprehensive” sex educators. Get one study that questions abstinence and they all consider it the gospel truth, even though they demand separation of church and state.

So, what’s wrong with this picture? First, the Mathematica study targeted children who were too young to absorb the abstinence message. Second, virtually all educators know that presenting a topic without any repetition or reinforcement will not be effective. These basic flaws in the study design should clearly invalidate the findings in the study report.

Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, Director and Senior Fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, noted another major difference between abstinence and casual sex education when she stated, “Comprehensive sex education is not values based. Yet, sex involves values — especially the values of commitment, love and intimacy. If values are omitted, the teaching implies that casual teen sex has no lasting consequences as long as the teens use a condom.”

Family Research Council’s Washington Update noted that the Mathematica study only tracked four elementary and middle school programs, representing less than one percent of the 700 abstinence programs that receive Federal funding. The Washington Update observed, “The four programs that Mathematica evaluated (beginning in 1999) have already been revised and improved, and they are by no means representative of abstinence education as a whole.” and concluded, “For every study that disparages the abstinence approach, there are many others that point to its success and suggest that effective, long-term programs should be given more funding—not less.”

Bill Beckman