Congressional hearing will scrutinize abstinence-only funding
April 23, 2008 10:34:02
by Anna
Web Correspondent
Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota Action Fund
Comprehensive sex education supporters will be happy to hear that Congress is bringing the issue of abstinence-only funding to the forefront of legislative discussion, which could lead to amendment of current abstinence-only policies. While the matter has resurfaced several times in the past few months at both state and federal levels, I had always feared that hoping for the best was too optimistic considering the federal government's sex education record. Today, however, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding a hearing titled "Domestic Abstinence-Only Programs: Assessing the Evidence."
Based on its stated goals and the experts who will be speaking, not to mention that it represents an active attempt by the House of Representatives to examine this important issue more closely, I am sincerely hopeful about this hearing. It aims to thrash out "the public health evidence of the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs and of more comprehensive programs," emphasizing that current abstinence-only funding prohibits educators from discussing condoms and other forms of contraception "other than to discuss failure rates." The hearing will be led by pro-choice representative Henry Waxman (D.-CA).
Speakers include Max Siegel of the AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth, and Families, Chairwoman Margaret Blythe of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Adolescence, and Executive Director Georges Benjamin of the American Public Health Association, to name just a few. Blythe recently expressed support for STD prevention education and confidential STD screening for teens in a New York Daily News article on increasing infection rates among teenagers. Georges Benjamin is known for his work concerning HIV/AIDS and has spoken in collaboration with National Organizations Responding to AIDS (NORA) to discuss how racial and socioeconomic disparities contribute to HIV infection and the need for more culturally sensitive and comprehensive education on HIV. I am confident that these speakers will deliver convincing arguments as to why schools should provide more comprehensive sex education.
The hearing today is part of an ongoing attempt by some legislators to remove abstinence-only stipulations from the Fiscal Year 2009 Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Bill. Congressman Jim Moran (D-Va.) led 76 members of Congress in addressing this problem in a letter to the House Appropriations Committee on March 19. Also in March, Iowa became the seventeenth state to reject federal Title V funding that requires abstinence education. The "Domestic Abstinence-Only Programs" Hearing is a major step towards adopting a federal policy that supports comprehensive sex education, which already enjoys widespread favor among state governments, individual legislators, medical professionals, and countless other citizens.
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