Re: FY 2002 Labor-Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill -- Funding for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education 

Dear Conferee: 

As you join your colleagues to prepare a final LHHS Appropriations bill, the American Civil Liberties Union urges you not to increase funding for the SPRANS (Special Projects of Regional and National Significance) abstinence-only-until-marriage program, included under the Maternal and Child Health Block Grants Program. While the ACLU believes that discussion of abstinence is an important component of any educational program about human sexuality, the ACLU oppose efforts such as the current SPRANS program that focus exclusively on abstinence and censor other valuable information that can help young people to make responsible decisions about sexual activity and reproduction. 

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. Abstinence-only programs infringe upon constitutional rights of free expression by censoring the transmission of vitally needed information about human sexuality and reproduction, either omitting any mention of topics such as contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and AIDS or presenting 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 demonstrates 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. 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). 

Anecdotal 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 is either because schools have limited curricular time to devote to sexuality instruction or because they 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. 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 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, the ACLU urges you not to increase funding for the SPRANS abstinence-only-until-marriage program. 

Sincerely, 

Laura W. Murphy,
Director 

Gregory T. Nojeim
Associate Director and Chief Legislative Counsel