THEY JUST DO NOT WORK

Abstinence only pledges do not work. Personally I know that they don't. When I was in high school, I made one. I did it to get even with my step father. He was under the impression that I would get pregnant before I got out of high school because I liked the boys. Yep I was boy crazy when I was younger. I managed not to have sex. It wasn't the pledge that prevented me. I was just too scared to approach one particular fellow until I graduated from high school. If we had dated longer, he would have been my first at that particular time.

I am also very lucky in that my adoptive mother was very open and honest about sex. She explained the processes of sex. I was also taught sex education in the schools several times.

When I got to college, it was a whole different ball game. You look at life differently. My mother and I made this pledge to each other. If I decided that I wanted to have sex, I was to tell her and she would help with birth control. That is exactly what happened. I had my exam in January. My first sexual experience was much later that year.

This article came out in the last couple of days. I like this one because the author approaches this in snarky manner. People need to realize that our kids need education. Sex education and parental responsibility. There is absolutely no reason why we should not be teaching these in the schools.

Here is his version of the study recently released.
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801588.html?hpid=topnews">Big scientific news today, and unlike some studies, which just tend to confirm things we already know, this study has a surprising result. A large federal study conducted by a Johns Hopkins researcher and published in Pediatrics shows that, yes, indeed, those premarital abstinence pledges some teenagers take do have an impact on their behavior.

Do they abstain from sex more than their pledge-less peers? No, of course not.
Do they abstain from certain kinds of sexual activity, then? Nope.
Oh, do they only have sex with fewer partners? Nope.
Um ... do they wait longer to have sex? Nope.
Um ... then what is the effect?

Well, there seems to be one area where they are different from their peers: They are more likely to have unprotected sex. That's right, the one thing we know to be different about teenagers who pledge not to have sex at all is that only 1 in 4 of them use condoms, compared to a still-dismal 1 in 3 among teenagers who are not pressured into taking such silly pledges.

Teens who take these pledges are more likely to have been educated in abstinence-only programs. They are taught in programs that promote unrealistic promises over realistic tools and options that are proven to save lives.

Perhaps now we can move beyond the notion that abstinence rings and pledges are anything more than a way for teenagers to adverrtise their own false sense of superiority over their peers.