"Setting aside the fact that their entire policy is to not make young people "highly educated" about birth control, even if kids were educated, . . ."

Since the American primary educational system cannot even teach children how to read, why should it be a surprize that they can't teach them about sex?

South Park was right. There should be absolutely no sex education in the public schools. If kids are going to be sexually active, the schools should not be active participant in encouraging such behavior. Why can't the school nurse simply say "go see your own doctor"
for anything pertaining to sex?

This study would only be a verdict on abstinence education if you assume that abstinence-only education is the only type of sex ed. being taught. Some schools teach it, others teach comprehensive sex ed. All this new data tells us is all sex ed programs taken to together aren't reducing teen pregnancy rates.

One other comment... Kate mocks the agrument that "we don't have enough abstinence-only education." Personally, I don't think we need more. But I won't hold my breath for her to mock the next liberal who says the only reason a gov't program isn't working is that we're not doing enough of it.

Believe it or not, even though I totally disagree with abstinence education, I still think it was nice to see Rector make that comment about being over 20 AND married before becoming a parent.

The reason is because the position of most abstinence advocates and teaching materials I have seen is to completely ignore the issue of TEEN motherhood and go after only OUT OF WEDLOCK motherhood-- and out of wedlock sex.

And that has a lot to do with religious beliefs (which say that two married 16 year olds having unprotected sex is not sinful but a 35 year old single person having safe sex is committing a sin) and nothing to do with reality. The reality is teenage motherhood isn't any better when the parties are married to each other than when they are not, because marrying too early screws up a woman's life just as much as having a baby does, and many of those teen marriages are abusive and short.

So I guess it is some progress for an abstinence advocate to be conceding that people marrying too young and having babies within the marriage is a problem.

I'm a fairly young fellow, so the first time I heard about Robert Rector, it was from Ed Kilgore:

Now many of you probably have never heard of Robert Rector, but he's basically a human rottweiler that Heritage unleashes now and then to bare his teeth and growl at any Republican daring to betray Conservative Orthodoxy. He made his bones back during the welfare reform debate of the mid-1990s, in which he manned the Far-Right pole of opinion, demanding a categorical denial of federal assistance to non-citizens and to unwed mothers.

This study would only be a verdict on abstinence education if you assume that abstinence-only education is the only type of sex ed. being taught. Some schools teach it, others teach comprehensive sex ed. All this new data tells us is all sex ed programs taken to together aren't reducing teen pregnancy rates.

Since abstinence-only programs have been increasing while comprehensive sex ed programs have been stable or decreasing at the same time that teenage pregnancies have risen, I think there might be a correlation there.

Anon - Have comprehensive programs been decreasing? Even if they were, correlation doesn't equal causation. That's pretty basic.

Anon - Have comprehensive programs been decreasing? Even if they were, correlation doesn't equal causation. That's pretty basic.

Eric (I was the anon above), while they might not be the cause of the increase, you certainly can't point to them as beneficial given this data. And if they aren't beneficial then they are a waste of money and should be eliminated.

One thing that certainly has been increasing is the percentage of the population from cultures largely opposed to or ignorant of contraception and other benefits of the modern world. Deport some illegals and the teen pregnancy numbers will go back down.

Good to see the ignorant racists make themselves heard here. We just don't get enough of that these days.

One thing that certainly has been increasing is the percentage of the population from cultures largely opposed to or ignorant of contraception and other benefits of the modern world

You mean Alabama?

Col Bat - I'm all for eliminating the programs (at least the federally funded ones). But, from this data, you'd also have to conclude the same thing about comprehensive sex ed and eliminate those programs too.