It s an outdated idea. It isn t practical. It just won t work. These are but a few of the reasons school administrators, Planned Parenthood and others use when rejecting the idea of abstinence-based sex education.
Evidence says otherwise.
A recent study in the American Journal of Sociology concludes that teenagers who make a pledge to remain sexually abstinent are 34 percent less likely to have sex than those who do not make such a pledge. Peter S. Bearman, a Columbia University sociologist and co-author of the study, said, among those who formally promise to avoid unmarried sex, about 50 percent remained virgins until about age 20. Bearman feels hid study has been downplayed by the left and overemphasized by the right. He says its main point is that abstinence pledges delay the time when many teens become sexually active, but pledges alone won t work for everyone. Outlasting the Statistics Devon Quirion, however, knows that its possible to do much better that mere delay.