Virginity pledges: Still a good idea?
- Jan 12, 2009 - 3
Before 2008 ended, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin welcomed her first grandchild into the world. Her daughter Bristol and fiancé Levi Johnston named their baby Tripp. Bristol, age 18, will earn her final high school credits this semester. Levi will finish online while working as an electrical apprentice in the North Slope. The couple plans to marry later this year. These young people face a tough road, made somewhat smoother with the help of Bristol’s supportive family, which Governor Palin says is “over the moon with the arrival of this healthy, beautiful baby.”
The news of the pregnancy, of course, was “shocking,” met with “some fear and a bit of despair.” The press statement from the governor’s office included a window into Sarah Palin’s faith: “Isn’t it just like God to turn those circumstances into such an amazing, joyful blessing when you ask Him to help you through?”
Bristol Palin’s pregnancy was disclosed just days after her mother was chosen as John McCain’s running mate, and critics of abstinence education pounced on the news. If Christian parents, and the nation’s schools, spent more time teaching contraception, they said, Bristol wouldn’t be in this pickle. Advocates for comprehensive sex education, already on a mission to convince states to reject federal abstinence funding, now had more ammunition.
Today, they’re thrilled as they look forward to a more liberal Congress that will be inclined to cut funding for abstinence-only education. And they plan on reminding President-elect Obama of his campaign pledge to Planned Parenthood to eliminate abstinence programs, which total about $176 million in federal funding. (For a school district to access abstinence funding, its curriculum must emphasize that abstinence is the “expected standard for all school-age children” and that a “mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.”)
These folks also are applauding a new study from Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Its conclusion: “Virginity Pledges don’t work.” The Washington Post summarized the report as saying: Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence, and are about 10 percent less likely to use birth control.
Researcher Janet Rosenbaum, whose report on the Johns Hopkins study appears in the January issue of Pediatrics, says, “Taking a pledge doesn’t seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior…But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking.” The anti-abstinence-ed lobby will employ this analysis to help them make the case that requiring abstinence-only education is toxic to our kids, and that promises to abstain from sex until marriage actually lead to more pregnancies.
But is this the logical conclusion from this study? Or is it, as in the case of Bristol Palin, who now says her situation “isn’t ideal,” a story about teens who plan to behave, and mess up?
The Johns Hopkins study is one of many surveys studying the dramatic drop in the teen pregnancy rate over the past fifteen years. In 1996, the Clinton administration introduced federal funding for abstinence education as part of the Welfare Reform Act. President Bush and the Republican Congress increased funding and strengthened the requirements.
Sex educators argue over whether programs that stress pure abstinence or abstinence-plus-contraception are most effective. A study by the Heritage Foundation found that, on average, abstinence-plus curricula devoted “only 4.7 percent of their page content to the topic of abstinence and zero percent to healthy relationships and marriage.” The primary focus of these programs was “on encouraging young people to use contraception.”
One common principle has risen from all this research: The best programs focus on character development and positive activities aimed at fostering self-respect and upholding marriage. A virginity pledge can be part of this. It’s a promise. The potential to fail is always present. We all make News Years’ resolutions we don’t keep. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make them.
Penna Dexter is a conservative activist and frequent panelist on “Point of View” syndicated radio program. Her weekly commentaries air on the Bott and Moody Radio Networks. She also serves as a consultant for KMA Direct Communications in Plano, Texas.
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to encourage sexual purity and abstinence in the lives of single men and women across America. If you would like to learn more about this important issue, additional resources are available here. If your church is interested in purchasing bulletin inserts or other materials on sexual purity, please visit our online bookstore.
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comments
1 On Jan 13th, 2009, at 4:07pm, Jimmy Hester wrote:
Penna Dexter is right on target. One point of clarification related to Janet Rosenbaum’s study. Rosenbaum’s study was based on research conducted over a period of time in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. She used a different research technique to evaluate that data. Her research looked into the bahavior of students who held similar religious and conservative values with one group making pledges to abstinence and the other group non-pledgers. The paper finds that the religious and conservative lifestyle of both pledgers and similar non-pledgers includes much more conservative sexual behavior than the general American adolescent population.
2 On Jan 13th, 2009, at 5:02pm, Aleene Griswold wrote:
Southern Baptist have a slogan: LOVE WAITS.
3 On Jan 14th, 2009, at 7:17am, Buck Golden wrote:
In my opinion, it only stands to reason that if we truly want to protect our children from unintended pregnancy and the multi-generational cycle of poverty that comes with it then we need to continue to teach our kids that waiting to become sexually active is in their best interest. We also need to teach them about the economic realities of teen pregnancy.
If we want to prevent abortion we need to prevent pregnancy. If we want to prevent pregnancies we need to educate teens about contraception because most of them are going to have sex regardless of the virginity pledges we all want to hear and believe.