Palin daughter’s pregnancy renews abstinence-only debate Posted on September 3rd
With the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter now becoming an issue in presidential politics, public health experts say that if parents haven’t had a heart-to-heart recently with their children about sex, now would be an opportune time.
“We do hope that parents take this opportunity … to sit down around the kitchen table and have a two-way discussion with the teens in their lives and address these issues of sex, love and relationship, pregnancy and family formation,” said Bill Albert of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Palin’s daughter Bristol attended a school where abstinence education is taught, and Palin has expressed her opposition to “explicit” sex education.
Though abstinence education programs have become more prevalent in the past decade, fueled by more than $1 billion poured into public school programs by the Bush administration, their effectiveness in curbing teen sex and sexually transmitted diseases remains questionable. A study sponsored by Congress found last year that students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, reported having similar numbers of sexual partners, and first had sex at about the same age.
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