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  • Title: The Clinton administration's adolescent pregnancy prevention program: ignorance does not equal abstinence.
    Author: Flinn SK.
    Journal: SIECUS Rep; 1997; 25(4):18-9. PubMed ID: 12319711.
    Abstract:
    In January 1997, the US president noted that birth rates for US teenagers have declined for four years in a row. Two days later, the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a report outlining the federal government's strategy to support effective, local-level programs to prevent adolescent pregnancy. The proposed strategy promotes funding for "abstinence-until-marriage" education, which is likely to have the opposite of its intended impact. The first section of the strategy recaps and promotes abstinence-only provisions of the previous year's welfare reform law and promotes funding for restrictive and inaccurate sex education programs. The second section and its accompanying appendix make the misleading claim that the programs listed directly target teen pregnancy. The third section describes the vital process of building partnerships among state, local, and national organizations to address the problems of teen pregnancy. The fourth section calls for an essential improvement in data collection, research, and evaluation. The fifth section describes the importance of disseminating information about innovative and effective approaches to the problem, but none of the cited programs, which work because they include information about family planning and contraception, would qualify for the abstinence-only funding. The final section reiterates a national strategy supporting abstinence in a campaign built around a program entitled "Girl Power]" and a more vague effort to encourage boys to delay fatherhood. This national strategy will either accomplish nothing or it will actually harm young people because it is ineffective and dishonest. Pregnancy prevention experts in the Clinton administration have acknowledged that young people must have proper information to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, yet the Clinton administration is promoting an unworkable proposal.
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