As Keith Deltano writes, "Would the Obama administration actually ban sexual abstinence programs while promoting healthy relationships? Sounds kind of like banning seatbelts while promoting car safety."
Deltano's essay, published over at the Abstinence Clearinghouse blog, continues:
It seems that any type of activity is acceptable, except telling a thirteen year old that not having sex would be more likely to keep him/her “healthy”. If you don’t believe me here is the link to the actual HHS grant application. It’s a 42-page document, so go to section IV.5 to see the actual ban. It reads, “Applicant must include a written statement that specifically includes: A commitment to not use funds for unauthorized activities, including, but not limited to, an Abstinence Education program.”
Kind of creepy isn’t it, you have to provide a “written statement” that you won’t encourage teens not to have sex.
So there it is, in writing buried deep in a federal grant application - you can pass out condoms to teenagers, but you can’t encourage those teenagers not to have sex. This contradiction is especially worrisome when one considers all the secular peer reviewed studies that show sex before marriage has a negative affect on marriage, the most recent is a very credible study coming out of the University of Iowa.
Now logic seems to be absent from the currant administrations approach to pregnancy prevention, disease prevention, and marriage promotion. It seems the Obama administration and the Health and Human Services Department in particular, feel that all three can be addressed with condom promotion, education, and distribution. This despite the overwhelming underreported evidence that condoms have a high cumulative failure rate. The University of Iowa study came out with some very logical findings, that’s probably why it was ignored by the administration as well as mainstream media...
Now here comes the real scary question. All these studies are available to HHS. The ones that show that abstinence education works, the ones that show multiple partners before marriage has a negative effect on marriage and the cumulative failure rates for condoms, are all part of academic literature. I believe that HHS is aware of all this science, yet they chose to ban abstinence education anyway. Why? Perhaps the questions should be asked, “What powerful group or groups benefit both politically and financially from teen pregnancy and how would those groups influence public policy?”
