Accurate sex education trumps “common sense”  Curiosity about sex is a normal and natural fact of life and young people who have the facts are best equipped to make responsible decisions.  But recently, a writer from Heritage Community Services wrote that “skewed opinions and radical activist headlines” are being used to dissuade South Carolinians who believe that the “common-sense message” of abstinence-only education makes it the best approach in combating teen pregnancy.  However, the facts do not support this position. Consider this: According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, South Carolina has the 9th highest teen pregnancy rate and the 13th highest teen birth rate in the nation. As Wilbur Johnson and Kay Chitty recently pointed out in a letter on February 16, 2010, births to young mothers cost South Carolina taxpayers $156 million annually. Youth ages 15-24 account for almost half of new sexually transmitted infection cases in South Carolina. Pregnancy rates of 18-19 year-olds are on the rise even though rates of teen pregnancy for 15-17 year olds are the lowest they have ever been. Currently, South Carolina’s “Comprehensive Health Education Act” mandates comprehensive and medically accurate sex education for students as they make their way through elementary, middle and high schools in our state.  And, rightfully so!  Under the Health Education Act, schools are required to teach students about “physical, mental, emotional, social, economic, and psychological aspects of close personal relationships and an understanding of the physiological, psychological, and cultural foundations of human development.”  Those are all keys to answering the inevitable “why?” when a child is told to abstain from sex.  Virtually all major medical organizations support such comprehensive sex education, including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Nurses Association, American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, American Psychological Association, American Public Health Association, National Institutes of Health, and the Institute of Medicine.  Perhaps more importantly, more than 90% of South Carolina adults agree that schools should include information about sexually transmitted diseases and sexual abuse in addition to abstinence as part of comprehensive sex education. And, more than 80%  of South Carolinians have voiced support for addressing topics such as parenting, physical changes, reproductive anatomy, contraception, pregnancy and childbirth in the school sexual education curriculum.  Abstinence education is an important piece of a comprehensive sex education program but should not be the only piece.  Abstinence should be presented to children when developmentally appropriate, as guided by South Carolina law and educational guidelines, as the only sure way to avoid a pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, but not to the exclusion of medically accurate factual information.  It is agreed that values are an important part of everyone’s life.  But values are best taught by parents and other influential voices heard in homes and churches.  It is the job of every teacher to teach facts at school.  South Carolina has approved curriculum that employs a collaborative approach that brings together parents, teachers, policy makers, as well as faith and business leaders because schools can’t do it alone.  One such program is called “Making Proud Choices!”  The “Making Proud Choices!” program teaches, in an age-appropriate manner: health promotion and disease prevention concepts; behaviors that enhance health and reduce risk; how to analyze the influence of personal beliefs, culture, mass media, technology, and other factors on heath; interpersonal communication skills; goal-setting and decision-making skills; and ways to advocate for personal, family, and community health Research has demonstrated unequivocally that comprehensive programs like Making Proud Choices! do not increase the rates or reduce the age of sexual initiation. Despite emphasizing an abstinence-only message in the past, children in South Carolina have reported initiating sex at one of the lowest average ages in the country: 13. 5 years old.  Abstinence-only approaches may sound ideal and deliver a message that is easy to feel good about, but none have been shown to yield promised results.  Abstinence-only approaches simply fail to deal with complex issues of intimacy that often come up in the relationships of maturing children and teenagers.    With the numbers of teenaged parents and incidents of sexually transmitted diseases indisputably on the rise, we have a responsibility not only to encourage young people to stay abstinent but also to present to them medically accurate, age-appropriate information that they can use to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease.  Lica Colwell Chair, Charleston County Teen Pregnancy Prevention Council

In response to the March 24th Letter to the Editor entitled “Character-based abstinence education good start for life,” I’d like to first point out that I agree 100% with the writer that abstinence works.  Science has proven that if you don’t have sex, you won’t get pregnant.  It’s very hard to dispute this.    However, it is very easy to argue that traditional abstinence-only PROGRAMS don’t work.  It has been proven over and over again that they don’t keep kids from having sex.  The writer cited the Mathematica Policy Research stating “stunningly positive” results from abstinence-only programs.  What the writer has conveniently omitted was the key finding (according to Mathematic Policy Research website) that “youth in the program group were no more likely than those in the control group to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of sexual partners." What this means is that young people who participated in abstinence-only programming showed similar rates of abstinence, number of sexual partners and age at first sex as compared to teens who had no intervention at all.  And when you couple this with the fact that many traditional abstinence-only programs teach that condoms are ineffective at preventing disease and pregnancy, many teens who participate in these programs do not contracept when then do choose to become sexually active.  According to the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey, half of high school students in South Carolina have had sex.  By the time they become seniors, that number rises to 75%.  In SC, teens 19 years old and younger account for nearly 1 in 3 Chlamydia cases, over 1 in 5 Gonorrhea cases and 1 in 20 HIV/AIDS cases (SCDHEC, 2007) .  We are doing a disservice to our youth, our community and our state by refusing to offer our students the comprehensive (both abstinence and contraception) education that they need.  And it’s not only education that they need, it is education that is required by law under the SC Comprehensive Health Education Act.  This law requires that students receive at least 750 minutes of reproductive health education and pregnancy prevention education during high school.  Education should stress the importance of abstaining from sexual activity, but also explain methods of contraception and the risks and benefits of each method.  Abstinence-only programs, which frequently teach the ineffectiveness of condoms, are in direct conflict with South Carolina state law. Additionally, the writer states that advocates for comprehensive health education for the young people of South Carolina are “politically biased condom enthusiasts” who are “working to convince legislators, parents, teachers, school administrators and the good citizens of South Carolina that abstinence education shouldn't be allowed in schools.”  According to the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy’s 2004 South Carolina Speaks (data collected by University of South Carolina’s Institute for Public Service and Policy Research), 81% of registered voters in SC support sex education containing information on abstinence and contraception.  The majority of South Carolinians support ethical, factual comprehensive health education for our young people.  It’s high time that the public funding that is spent on adolescent pregnancy prevention reflects the public opinion. Leslie Pridgen Director of Youth Programs Charleston Trident Urban League