PUBLIC HEALTH & EDUCATION | National Abstinence Education Association Launches Effort Aimed at Gaining Support of 1M Parents
[June 2, 2008]

Last week, the National Abstinence Education Association launched a $1 million nationwide campaign aimed at garnering the support of one million parents to lobby schools for more abstinence-only education programs, the Washington Post reports.

Participants in the program will be encouraged to lobby schools to implement abstinence-only programs and to support political candidates for local, state and national offices who support such programs. The group sent e-mails promoting the Parents for Truth campaign to about 30,000 supporters, practitioners and parents last week and plans to e-mail an additional 100,000 this week, according to the Post. NAEA hopes to recruit 100,000 parents during the first year of the campaign -- which charges a $30 registration fee to all participants. NAEA's projection of one million participants within three years is based on a 1993-1994 Georgia campaign that recruited 60,000 members to lobby the state to provide abstinence-only education programs.

Efforts to recruit participants for the campaign include a three-minute video, which states that comprehensive sex education programs encourage teenagers to engage in sexual activity, and a Web site offering parents advice about sex education. The video features the mother of a 13-year-old girl who was alarmed after learning the details of the sex education program taught at her daughter's school, which included suggestions that teens should give each other condoms and could shower together. Supporters of comprehensive sex education programs said the campaign is misleading given that the "Be Proud! Be Responsible!" curriculum cited in the NAEA video was developed to help slow the spread of HIV/AIDS among black male teenagers ages 13 to 19 and cited showering as an activity with a low risk of HIV transmission.

According to the Post, NAEA is launching the campaign as Congress approaches the annual debate over the level of federal funding for abstinence-only programs, which critics have said are ineffective. At least 17 states have refused federal funding for such programs, the Post reports.

Comments

NAEA Executive Director Valerie Huber said, "There are powerful special interest groups who can far outspend what parents can in terms of promoting their agenda," adding that the group "recognize[s] that parents more than make up for that by their determination and motivation to protect their own children." Parents "are told the content of the curricula in their children's classrooms stress abstinence and just have information to make decisions in case they become sexually active," Huber said, adding that "most of these programs provide explicit how-to information that give[s] teens a green light for activities that put them at risk."

James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, said the NAEA video is a "classic fear and smear campaign," adding, "It's absolutely misleading." Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the government has "wasted" $1.5 billion on abstinence-only programs that "don't work," adding that parents "want education programs in our schools that do work and will keep teens healthy -- by including information about abstinence as well as contraception, healthy communication, responsible decision-making, and prevention of sexually transmitted infections" (Stein, Washington Post, 6/1).





The information contained in this publication reflects media coverage of women’s health issues and does not necessarily reflect the views of the National Partnership for Women & Families.

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