Sign-on Letter to President Bush Regarding Abstinence-Only Education Programs

President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500 

Dear President Bush: 

The undersigned organizations urge you to reconsider your proposed increase in funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage education programs. Your budget requests a boost in funding for these programs to $133 million, a $33 million increase over Fiscal Year 2002. The increase is earmarked for the SPRANS (Special Projects of Regional and National Significance) abstinence-only-until-marriage program, which is included under the Maternal and Child Health Block Grants Program. 

While we believe that discussion of abstinence is an important component of any educational program about human sexuality, we oppose efforts that focus exclusively on abstinence and censor other valuable information that can help young people to make responsible and safe decisions about sexual activity and reproduction. Moreover, these programs raise serious civil liberties and public health concerns. 

Abstinence-only programs constitute government-sponsored censorship. The current SPRANS language permits funds to be used only for programs that have as their "exclusive purpose," the benefits of abstinence. In addition, recipients of federal funds must "agree not to provide a participating adolescent with any other information regarding sexual conduct in the same setting." See HHS Application Guidance for SPRANS Community-based Abstinence Education at 7 (Feb. 2, 2001). Thus, recipients of federal abstinence-only funds operate under a gag order that prohibits them from providing information in their funded program on preventing sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy through the use of recognized methods of contraception, even when they are asked directly for this information by a young person participating in the program. The SPRANS program, like other similarly restrictive abstinence-only programs, thus infringes on constitutional rights of free expression by censoring the transmission of vitally needed information about human sexuality and reproduction. SPRANS leaves grantees no choice but to omit any mention of topics such as contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and AIDS or to present these subjects in a nonscientific, inaccurate fashion. 

Abstinence-only programs are ineffective and can endanger young people's health. There is no compelling data that demonstrate that abstinence-only programs funded under SPRANS are effective in helping to delay sexual initiation or helping to reduce risk-taking behaviors among young people. In fact, the overwhelming weight of evidence suggests that programs that include messages about both abstinence and contraception are most effective in delaying the onset of sex among young people, reducing the number of sexual partners they have, and in making them better users of contraception when they do become sexually active. Moreover, studies show that parents want other trained adults to provide accurate and forthright information about sex to their children. See Tina Hoff et al., Sex Education in the Classroom 30-33 (2000). 

Evidence also suggests that the availability of federal abstinence-only dollars is steering schools away from teaching comprehensive sexuality education altogether, even in non-federally funded programs. This results from several factors. First, schools have limited curricular time to devote to sexuality instruction. Second, many schools fear that such teaching will jeopardize their likelihood of receiving a federal grant in a program that assigns priority to "local communities which demonstrate a strong record of support for abstinence education." See HHS Application Guidance for SPRANS Community-based Abstinence Education at 8. Third, because federal abstinence dollars are matching dollars, state funds for sex education are being diverted into these programs. According to one study, as of 1999, one-third of the nation's high schools were promoting abstinence-only education, while excluding information about contraception and safer sex. See Adam Sonfield and Rachael Benson Gold, States' Implementation of the Section 510 Abstinence Education Program, FY 1999, 33(4) Family Planning Perspectives 166 (2001). Thus, abstinence-only money is reducing the availability of information that young people -- many of whom are already sexually active -- need to protect their health and to prevent unintended pregnancy. 

Abstinence-only programs undermine efforts to stop the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. These programs provide inaccurate information about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the transmission of HIV and exaggerate the data on condom failure rates. Such misleading information poses grave risks to young people's health. 

Abstinence-only programs create a hostile environment for lesbian and gay teens and pose particular risks to the health of these teens. By excluding information about safer sex and teaching about sex only in the context of marriage, abstinence-only programs stigmatize gay and lesbian teens and undermine efforts to educate those teens about HIV and STD prevention. Abstinence-only programs also create a hostile environment for lesbian and gay youth. These programs rely on fear and shame and address same-sex sexuality only as a context for HIV transmission. At least two widely used abstinence-only curricula -- Clue 2000 and Facing Reality -- are overtly hostile to lesbians and gay men. Such hostility violates the rights of lesbian and gay youth to attend school free of discrimination. 

Abstinence-only programs entangle the government with religion. Many abstinence?only curricula contain religious prescriptions for proper behavior and values, in violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of the separation of church and state. A popular abstinence-only curriculum called "Sex Respect," for example, was originally designed for parochial school use. While it now uses the term "nature" in place of "God," it still has strong religious undertones and cites religious publications as its reference sources. Although the SPRANS guidelines do not permit abstinence-only grant recipients to convey religious messages and to impose religious viewpoints, in practice, many of these programs do precisely that. This is an inappropriate and unnecessary entanglement of government with religion. 

For these reasons, we urge you to reconsider your proposed increase in funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. 

Sincerely, 

American Civil Liberties Union
Margaret Brick, M.Ed., Sexuality Education Trainer/Consultant
Feminists for Free Expression
Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network
Human Rights Campaign
Lambda Legal
National Coalition Against Censorship
Othmer Institute at Planned Parenthood of New York City
Peacefire
ProChoice Resource Center
Sexuality Information Education Council
Deborah L. Tolman, Ed.D, Senior Research Scientist, Center for Research on Women
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations