Northern Kentucky board chooses abstinence
After lengthy debate, decision shuts down “comprehensive sex education”
From, The Kentucky Citizen Digest, July/August, 2001.

Four out of ten young women experience their first pregnancy by the age of 20.  Numbers like these from The National Campaign to End Teen Pregnancy have some health officials concerned—so much that the Northern Kentucky Independent District Board of Health (NKIDBH) recently voted 16-4 to change all of its sex education programs to an “abstinence-only” curriculum.
    Among other things, the board’s March 28 vote will require that educators teach absti-nence and avoid what it calls double or mixed messages such as “safer sex.” Addia Wuchner, R.N. and Chairwoman of the Human Sexuality Committee, welcomes the new policy. “Abstinence is the best sexual behavior for our teens,” she said. “The future health of our society depends on the character of young people.  They make up 25 percent of our population but 100 percent of our future”
Local Debate
    Jim Molley, superintendent of Erlanger-Elsmere Independent Schools concurs. “This is a lesson that children need to learn,” he said. “That has to be our first approach when addressing all the ramifications of premarital sex.”
    Staff and board members who opposed the new “abstinence until marriage” policy accused Wuchner of “scandalizing” the debate by providing the NKIDBH with a report which included a sample from previous sex education programs. Wuchner highlighted instances wherein teachers had been encouraged to “help adolescents understand that same-sex experimentation is not uncommon and is a normal expression of developing sexuality.” Students also had been taught that “massaging your partner’s body and talking in an erotic way on the telephone” are “expressions of love and affection.”
    Examples like these raised the ire of board member Claire Ruehl of Lakeside Park. “These  kids are not any happier or freer when they are able to engage in sex,” Ruehl said, adding that the previous programs gave teens permission to be promiscuous.
    Wuchner’s com-mittee, which had been set up by the NKIDBH last December, voted to ban two of their previous programs — Reducing the Risk (RTR) and Teen Outreach Program (TOP) — in their four-county area.
    Barbara Black, Kenton County Commissioner and county judge designee to the Health Board, applauded the decision, “As a mother of two teen girls and recipient of a Master’s degree in  nursing, I regard it a privelege to have help to set this excellent standard for northern Kentucky, and the state at large.”

    Although the department’s new abstinence-only approach to sex education has stimulated a heated debate in the community, it has found increasing favor among teachers and nurses. A 2000 study, Changing Emphases in Sexuality Education in U.S. Public Secondary Schools, 1988-99, found that the numbers of teachers and nurses who favor abstinence education as the primary sexuality education for teens has increased significantly during the past decade.
    The report found that 41% of the participants responded that abstinence was the “most important message they wanted to convey to students,” compared to only 24% in 1988. The study further showed that in 1999, 23% of teachers said they presented abstinence as the only way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, an increase from just 2% in 1988. The report also said the changes “reflect the increasingly strong promotion of abstinence as the only appropriate option for adolescents.”

    A 3000% increase in funding since 1996 proves that abstinence-based sex education programs have also found favor in Washington D.C.  President Bush has said he will seek to “elevate abstinence education from an afterthought to an urgent priority,” and vowed that his administration will spend at least as much each year on promoting abstinence as it does on providing contra-ceptive services to teen-agers.
    Federal support for “abstinence-only” education programs began in 1981 with The Adolescent Family Life Act, sponsored by opponents of Title X to “promote chastity and self-discipline among teenagers.”  However, the funding level for abstinence-only education under AFLA has remained low at $9 million per year.
    A provision included in the 1996 welfare reform created the second federal program supporting abstinence-only education. The law provides funding for programs promoting sexual abstinence exclusively for unmarried people of any age. It provides $50 million in annual funding to the states for five years.
    In 2000, Congress created the third federal abstinence education program, funded at $50 million over two years. This new program will provide $20 million this year and $30 million next year for community-based abstinence programs.
    A restrictive definition applies to funds allocated through the AFLA and SPRANS-CBAE programs. They must exclusively teach that “sexual activity outside of marriage may have harmful psychological and physical effects,” and that “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.” State and federal funding for all three programs fixed to this definition total almost $120 million for 2001.
    The NKIDBH supports the notion that abstinence programs are superior to the so-called “safe-sex” approaches that encourage both sexual experimentation and unhealthy lifestyles.  In addition, with the increased availability of block grants for abstinence curriculum, and with support for abstinence increasing among teachers and nurses, the action of the NKIDBH may become a model for health boards throughout Kentucky.
 
 

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander, Executive Director Martin Cothran, Senior Associate Policy Analyst