L’astinenza non basta

Uno studio dimostra definitivamente il fallimento delle politiche dell’amministrazione Bush sull’educazione sessuale, che il presidente ha preteso di ridurre alla sola propaganda in favore dell’astinenza (Arthur Caplan, «Bullheaded Bush Administration Puts Abstinence Ideology Before Lives», blog.bioethics.net, 24 aprile 2007):

In a just released major study ordered by Congress, independent researchers found that in four typical abstinence-only programs sampled from around the country there was absolutely no difference between the sexual activity of kids in these program and kids who were not. In one of the abstinence-only programs studied, the students met and got the ‘no sex’ message for an hour every day! All of the abstinence-only programs in the study had at least 50 hours of class time. The kids were in the programs for one to three years starting at about age 11.
Chastity-only sex ed had no impact whatsoever on the kids’ sexual behavior. The abstinence-only kids admitted to having sex at the same rate and starting at the same age as other students not in these classes. Whether they were in an abstinence-only class or not, by the time they reached 17 years of age, half the kids said they had had sex and half had not.
Telling kids every day “don’t have sex” – and nothing else – really does not work. American teenagers continue to get pregnant at a startling rate, leading to about 250,000 abortions every year – a higher abortion rate than in Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands or France, where sex ed consists of more than just “say no.”
The rates of sexually transmitted disease among American kids continue to outpace those in other developed nations. There is plenty of scientific evidence from the United States and Europe that sex-ed programs that talk about contraception, condoms and abstinence do a better job at preventing unwanted pregnancies and controlling sexually transmitted diseases than abstinence-only programs.