Another Reason for Abstinence

By Wade F. Horn and Jeffrey S Trimbath

Sometimes Washington has a penchant for stating the obvious.

Last week the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy released a study with this headline: “Pregnancy Among Sexually Experienced Teens Remains High.” Now, call us crazy, but the connection between teen sexual “experience” and pregnancy seems pretty obvious to us.

Just as teens who smoke are more likely to have health problems and teens who drink are more likely to get drunk, isn’t it logical that teens who have sex are more likely to get pregnant than those who don’t? Of course it is. And it illustrates the great amount of work that still needs to be done to tackle the problem of teen pregnancy.

The good news is that teen pregnancy rates in America are down substantially in the past several years. The bad news is that rates are still alarmingly high, according to the Campaign, for those teens who are sexually experienced.

More specifically, the report documents that teens who are sexually active at both a young age and who had multiple sexual partners are much more likely to become pregnant. Girls who had sex before the age of 15, for example, were nearly twice as likely to get pregnant than girls who waited to have sex (46% versus 25%). Girls with multiple sexual partners also were found to be more likely to have been pregnant than girls with fewer sexual partners (37% versus 25%). Similar statistically significant figures held true for boys as well.

Of these three major risk factors the study examined, only these two – the age at first onset, and the number of partners – were shown to be statistically significant for both boys and girls. In other words, if a teen delays the onset of sexual activity and reduces the number of partners, they are much less likely to become pregnant or get someone pregnant compared to those who don’t.

By definition, abstinence education programs aim to do just that. Through education, mentoring, counseling and peer support, abstinence education services help teens delay the onset of sexual activity and reduce the number of sexual partners they have. The ideal of abstinence programs is to encourage teens to enjoy sexual relations within marriage. Abstaining until you get married also has another beneficiary. Children who are born to married parents, verses unmarried parents, are more likely to succeed in life than those who don’t.

The good news about abstinence is that more and more teens are adopting it as their personal standard. In fact, according to the CDC, the percentage of teens who report that they have had sex has decreased from 54% in the early 1990s, to 46% today. Just a few short years ago, a majority of teens did not practice abstinence. Now, a majority of teens are abstinent. It just so happens that these trends coincide with increased funding for abstinence education from Washington. Coincidence? We think not.

The Campaign report shows us that the trend for more and more youth to choose abstinence is important to curtailing teen pregnancy. That is why the Bush Administration has proposed historic increases in abstinence education. Indeed, funding for the Community Based Abstinence Program has increased five-fold in the past five years.

The good news is that these investments seem to be paying off. Last year HHS released the interim results of the first long-term, longitudinal study of the effectiveness of federally funded abstinence education. Teens who participated in these programs showed an increased awareness of the risks associated with teen sexual behavior, and an increased acceptance of delaying sexual behavior. Of course, more work needs to be done, but these results are promising.

Illustrating his commitment to help youth make healthy choices, President Bush has said “Abstinence is the surest way and the only completely effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.” The Campaign report both supports this claim, and shows the need for us to continue to work with teens to help them delay sexual activity. Now, there’s an obvious fact with which we believe most Americans would agree.

Wade F. Horn, Ph.D. is the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families. Jeffrey S Trimbath is the Director of Abstinence Education at the Administration for Children and Families, HHS.