Abstinence programs stretch the facts - Post

Youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only sex-education courses frequently receive inaccurate or misleading information, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

According to a congressional staff analysis, some courses teach that touching a person's genitals can lead to pregnancy, abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, and half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, the Post said.

The report, prepared for California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, the Post said.

The Bush administration will provide $170 million next year to groups that teach abstinence only. Several million children age 9 to 18 have participated in more than 100 federal abstinence programs since they began in 1999.

The report found that 11 of the 13 most commonly used curricula in such programs contained unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, the Post said.

Waxman's staff found the curricula included misconceptions such as a 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person," HIV can be spread through tears and sweat, and condoms failed to prevent HIV transmission 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse, the Post said.

"I have no objection to talking about abstinence as a surefire way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. I don't think we should lie to our children about science," Waxman told the newspaper.