It’s like banging your head against a Congressional wall.  Congress has actually increased spending for next year's abstinence-only programs by $28 million, raising the total funds to over $140 million.  Oh the gall.  The nonsensical decision comes just days before the latest reliable study, this one from the non-partisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, to demonstrate that abstinence-only programs are ineffective.  Moreover, these programs fail to protect the health and well-being of America’s girls and women. 

These programs are wildly unpopular and already this year 14 states have rejected federal funding for abstinence-only programs provided under the federal Title V program.  These states recognize that spending the required state matching funds on such harmful programs is beyond wasteful.  Surveys have repeatedly shown that parents scorn such an overly-simplified just-say-no approach to sex education for their children. 

Programs accepting the $141 million now budgeted for abstinence-only-until-marriage education in 2008 are forbidden from promoting the use of contraception under any circumstances, leaving young people dangerously uninformed.  Moreover, many abstinence-only curricula are riddled with scientific and medical inaccuracies, including discredited information questioning the effectiveness of condoms.  The programs also stigmatize gay and lesbian youth whose sexual orientation is portrayed as outside the mainstream and whose future access to legal marriage is uncertain.    

So who comes out ahead?  Congress provided this substantial funding increase for the largest and worst of the three federal abstinence-only funding streams: the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program.  The CBAE program, a “love child” of the Bush administration, provides the largest amount of federal funding to the most extreme abstinence-only programs. Many who receive funds to implement abstinence-only programs are inexperienced and ideologically motivated organizations that frequently have ties to conservative religious groups. CBAE eliminates any state role in allocating abstinence-only funds, clearing the way for direct funding of faith based and anti-abortion groups, many of which receive millions of dollars each year and would simply cease to exist without the CBAE program.

And who are the biggest losers so to speak?  Women and girls suffer more as a result of these programs because they are the ones who get pregnant, and they are the ones who are more biologically vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections.  Many of the federally funded abstinence-only curricula reinforce outdated gender stereotypes about sexuality, and portray women as naturally chaste and men as sexual aggressors.  We all lose when so much federal funding is wasted. 

Congress’s allocation of additional federal funding for abstinence-only programs through the CBAE program undermines the demonstrated state preference for sex education programs that more effectively meet the real needs of all youth.  But playing politics with other people’s money (ours) has become the national bipartisan sport.  And it’s taxpayers who end up black and blue.