Two more items from the fact sheet quoted in my previous post:
External Quote:
The program was delivered to single gender groups of young people who were already friends.
This was apparently not a classroom program!
The second item is that the materials include "
Consent forms".
Now we can start debunking the heritage foundation article quoted in the OP.
It's "Back To School" time again, and here's the first pop quiz. No, it's not for the kids. It's for parents, and they have to answer only one question: Do you know what your children are learning in sex-education classes? If you're like most parents, the answer is no. But if the program is billed as "abstinence-based," you probably don't feel particularly concerned.
[..]
More likely, though, their children are being exposed to programs such as "Focus on Kids" (which, like other abstinence-plus programs, is heavily promoted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
I've bolded the bunk: "Focus on Kids" is not a school program, it requires the parents to sign a consent form, and nowhere in the fact sheet is abstinence even mentioned.
Even the Heritage Foundation do not classify "Focus on Kids" as an "abstinence-plus" program in their own study:
Obviously, the Heritage Foundation article is misleading the readers.
From the same study:
External Quote:
On average, authentic or traditional abstinence curricula devote 53.7 percent of their page content to abstinence-related material. In addition, these curricula devote 17.4 percent of their content to the subjects of healthy relationships and the benefits of marriage, both of which directly reinforce the main theme of teen abstinence.
Authentic abstinence curricula allocate zero percent of their content to promoting contraception.
Comprehensive sex-ed/abstinence-plus curricula take the opposite approach. On average, these curricula devote only 4.7 percent of their page content to the topic of abstinence and zero percent to healthy relationships and marriage. The primary focus of these curricula is on encouraging young people to use contraception. On average, comprehensive sex-ed curricula devote 28.6 percentof their page content to describing contraception and encouraging contraceptive use. Overall, comprehensive sex-ed curricula allocate six times more content to the goal of promoting contraception than to the goal of promoting abstinence. (See Table A and Chart A.)
View attachment 47205
Note also the different emphasis on STD awareness and General Behavioral Skills.
That is why comprehensive sex ed is good at preventing pregnancies (see the study I quoted in a previous post) and risky sexual behaviour (see e.g. CDC fact sheet for "Focus on Kids").
However, the Heritage Foundations says abstinence programs are effective, too:
Critics of abstinence education often assert that while abstinence education that exclusively promotes abstaining from premarital sex is a good idea in theory, there is no evidence that such education can actually reduce sexual activity among young people. Such criticism is erroneous. There are currently 10 scientific evaluations (described below) that demonstrate the effectiveness of abstinence programs in altering sexual behavior.
[18] Each of the programs evaluated is a real abstinence (or what is conventionally termed an "abstinence only") program; that is, the program does not provide contraceptives or encourage their use.
That article headlines concerns like "Sexually Transmitted Diseases" and "Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing", but the actual benefits of the abstinence programs are described as "
delaying early sexual activity", "reduced the rate of onset of sexual activity", "delaying the onset of sexual activity" and the like. That means kids lose their virginity later in life; but it doesn't actually say that less of them get pregnant or that they're less at risk of contracting STDs. If you thought abstinence programs generally achieve that, you've probably been misled.
