by Jen Swedish, Health Fellow
National Women’s Law Center
Texas presents a bit of a conundrum — despite receiving the most federal funding for abstinence-only programs, the state has incredibly high teenage pregnancy rates. At over $17 million, Texas receives more than 10 percent of the total federal funds for abstinence-only programs and nearly twice as much as the next-best funded state, Florida. Over the weekend, the Lufkin Daily News reported that Texas leads the nation in births to young women aged 15 to 19 and in repeat births, that is, births to teens who were already mothers. Clearly, despite the huge outpouring of federal funds, the abstinence-only approach has failed young women in Texas.
Abstinence-only programs harm young women by censoring important health information about contraceptives. Federal guidelines prohibit abstinence-only programs from providing teenagers with any information about contraception except its failure rates, and even this information is often greatly exaggerated. According to a report by Representative Henry Waxman, 11 of the 13 most popular curricula used in federally-funded abstinence-only programs contain “major errors and distortions of public health information,” including exaggerated reports of contraceptive failure rates and rates of disease transmission.
Undermining a young woman’s confidence in contraception threatens her health and increases her chance of becoming pregnant when she does become sexually active. High school students in Texas are having sex at higher rates than their cohorts nationwide, but they report lower usage of condoms and birth control pills, putting young women at even greater risk of sexually transmitted infection and unintended pregnancy. A sexually active young woman who does not use contraception has a 90 percent chance of becoming pregnant within one year, and young women aged 15-19 who do not use a contraceptive at first sex are twice as likely to become teen mothers as those who use a method.
Yet, folks in Texas and in the U.S. Congress still believe that we shouldn’t provide students with information about contraception in addition to abstinence. What’s wrong with this picture?
(ETA: Check on more on this from the Daily Women's Health Policy Report.)
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