Guess what's missing from Governor Ted Strickland's budget? The $500,000 a year that the state sets aside to match federal funding for abstinence-only education.
That means that Ohio has joined a handful of other states in saying thanks but no thanks to the government's funding for abstinence-only education. Yesterday, Strickland told reporters, "Quite frankly, I don't believe abstinence-only education programs work in the long run."
Strickland's decision comes on the heels of an announcement from the Ohio Department of Health that it plans to review the accuracy of abstinence-based sex education taught to thousands of middle- and high-school students. And for good reason. Two years ago, a researcher from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine released a report on abstinence-only in Ohio. The findings?
According to SIECUS, the report explains that "the curricula used in these programs contain false and misleading information about contraceptives and abortion, misrepresent religious beliefs as facts, present gender stereotypes as universal truths, do not meet the needs of all Ohio youth, and are not based in science."
The report quotes the director of one abstinence-only program in Ohio as stating, "we want to be able to develop relationships with the clients and plant the seed for spiritual growth and help them develop a relationship with Christ."
After the report was released, the state did nothing. Planned Parenthood has been fighting to change that.
"We would like to see an approach that uses tested or evaluated programs that include all kinds of supports for teens and gives them the skills that they need to make responsible decisions regarding sexual behavior," said Mary O'Shea, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland.
O'Shea is exactly right. And it takes nothing more than a few stories to convince me that it is dangerous to deny teenagers the age-appropriate, medically accurate information that may well save their lives. A couple months ago, we asked our friends on MySpace to tell us what sex ed was like in their schools.
In some schools, students get no sex ed at all:
"My school had no sex education. Zip. None. Nada. If you took anatomy, you got to name the parts of the reproductive system, but you didn't talk about what they were for. Surprise surprise, our school had a ridiculous teen pregnancy rate, especially for such an affluent suburban area. You couldn't get from one class to another without seeing at least one pregnant girl."
In some schools, students get sex ed that misleads and misinforms:
"The Sex Ed for my freshman class this year consisted of a twenty-nine year old woman talking about how she was married a few months ago, and how great it felt to have saved herself for her husband in holy matrimony...there was a bunch of information about all of the bad things STDs can do to you, and absolutely nothing on how to protect yourself."
And in other schools, students don't get the facts because their teachers fear the repercussions:
"My Health Teacher bought the books on contraception but couldn't let students see them because the school could be sued."
And we wonder why approximately 750,000 U.S. teens will become pregnant this year. It’s time to focus on real solutions for parents and teenagers. Providing teenagers with comprehensive information about abstinence as well as contraception, healthy communication, and prevention of sexually transmitted infections is common sense. Governor Strickland's rejection of abstinence-only funding is a significant step toward providing Ohio teens with the information they need to be safe and healthy.