Abstinence only sex education courses lie to youngsters with scary 'facts'

Main Category: Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 03 Dec 2004 - 9:00 PDT

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Some federally funded abstinence sex education courses tell youngsters that 50% of all American teenage gay men are HIV positive, touching someone's genitals can make you pregnant and abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, says the Washington Post. This is according to a congressional staff analysis.

The study was ordered by Henry Waxman, Californian Congressman. It studied 13 abstinence sex education courses - all of them federally funded. Millions of children throughout the USA have been on these courses (aged 9-18). The Bush administration is injecting $170 million into these courses during 2005.

According to the Washington Post, 11 of the studies contained information that was completely untrue and made subjective conclusions from these false statements.

The courses stated that 'condoms fail in 31% of cases of heterosexual sex'. Some of the courses went on to say that a fetus is a thinking person when it is just 43 days old. Many of the courses claimed that you can catch HIV from a person's tears.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Waxman said he is not against the idea of abstinence courses, but he is against using lies.

In an email received from Medical News Today, a health expert wrote 'Are we going back to the days when priests told young boys not to masturbate because you could go blind? Is this the kind of sex education we want for our kids?"

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