Teaching teens about sex

What happened

Sex-education programs that focus only on abstinence don’t affect the sexual behavior of teenagers, according to a study released Wednesday by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The group urged Congress, which is considering a spending bill with $141 million for abstinence-only programs, to support more comprehensive sex ed efforts.

What the commentators said

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There’s nothing surprising here, said Ben Greenman in his blog at AOL News. “Telling kids that it's good to wait, well, that makes sense. Encouraging them to wait also makes sense. But giving them no way of responsibly dealing with the process if they don't wait: that makes no sense at all.”

“Surely, in light of the overwhelming evidence, the government would stop throwing money at programs that obviously don’t work, right?” said Steve Benen in The Carpetbagger Report blog. “Wrong.” Democrats are actually throwing $4 million more at these useless programs than President Bush even asked for, simply because they want to make the spending bill “more attractive to Republicans.” Your tax dollars at work.

The “far-left pro-sex ed brigade” is having a field day, said the Sister Toldjah blog, but they should be as upset as conservatives over this. The disturbing news is that teens are not “saying no to sex,” and that is something that should worry everyone. But “with the far left, it’s more about ‘proving conservatives wrong’ than anything else—the physical and psychological well-being of young teens be damned.”