Astinence

In the article a statewide evaluation of the Education Now and Babies Later (ENABL) program was conducted in Florida. A quasiexperimental research methodology was used on 1,450 middle school students which were then turned into a group that was receiving the programs which was 974 students and a group that had not yet received any information about sex which was 476 students. The Students completed a pretest and posttest reflecting their knowledge and beliefs about teenage pregnancy. The group of students, that had received the program, scored higher from the first test to the last test they were given, while the group that had not received the program showed no improvement at all. The finding supported the statement delaying teen sex is effective to teens.

Although birth rates for teens have declined slightly from 1991 to 1995 it is still a problem. The rate of teen pregnancies in 1999 was 112 pregnancies per 1,000 females. Many of the teens who get pregnant have a high risk of poverty and ultimately end up raising their children in a single parent home. As a result of that the government paid of $34 billion of support to the teenage parent. After the government realized how much money they were spending, President Bill Clinton gave a promise to increase the efforts to reduce teen pregnancies rates.

A number of current history pregnancy prevention efforts show that new laws was approved which distributed $50 million annually towards abstinence-based programs. Also the states had a little competition in which they had to decrease the rate of their single parent pregnancies and keep their abortion rates low were eligible to receive an additional $20 million. A few states even devoted some of their funding directly towards sex and AIDS education, the many states who have not shows that they have a lack of interest or they have no desire to have control of the situation.

There has been evidence of people advocating sex education but few people seem to want to come out and help make a difference. Parents just say they support the idea but then show no effort to make a difference. However, a lot of parents also feel strongly that it is their duty to teach their child about sex but many of them don’t have the proper knowledge about human sexuality to teach their kids about preventing pregnancies. The U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) came up with five principle steps to reduce teen pregnancies: parental and adult involvement, abstinence, clears strategies for the future, community involvement, and a sustained commitment to youth over time. There are many who advocate these principles, but many teachers feel the programs are reaching the kids to late, by the time teen have theses programs most are already sexual active.

In some of the existing programs and evaluations there have been high achievement rates when the programs targeted younger adolescents. But along with the success they have found that even though the teen pregnancies decline, they progressively start to increase as the key components of the programs are pushed aside and forgotten.

Elizabeth