To abstain or not to abstain

Background

The 2004 elections led George Bush to his second term as president of the United States. The Bush administration's inclinations toward abstinence-only sex education programmes have been well known since his first term. When the 2006 budget proposal was announced, reductions in health expenditure, including a wide range of public health programmes, were apparent. But one thing was striking: increased funding for sex education programmes promoting abstinence-only unless married. These programmes prohibit discussion of contraception except in the context of failure rates of specific contraceptive methods, such as condoms and oral contraceptive pills. Most American teenagers become sexually active by the age of 18. One may thus anticipate the damage that can be done …