The Washington Post as a special feature on teen sex in today's issue. Here are some highlights:
U.S. teens also have a higher rate of infection and STDs -- due to lower condom use, according to the report.
The U.S. teen pregnancy rate (84 out of every 1,000 girls age 15 to 19 become pregnant each year) is higher than that that of Denmark (23), Finland (21), Germany (16) and Sweden (25), found a 2000 report in Family Planning Perspectives. (Differences in birth rates are also striking: Roughly six out of every 1,000 teen girls have babies every year in Switzerland, eight per 1,000 in Sweden, 10 per 1,000 in France, and 28 per 1,000 in England and Wales, according to the report, compared to about 54 per 1,000 in the United States. The U.S. abortion rate (then 29 per 1,000) was higher than that in Sweden (17), France (10), Finland (10) and the Netherlands (4), found the report.
Many abstinence programs have embraced the concept of virginity pledges, encouraging children as young as 9 to promise to wait until marriage to have sex.
So how reliable are reports of sexual activity by teenagers who took such a pledge?
Not very, according to a study by Harvard doctoral candidate Janet Rosenbaum published in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Rosenbaum found that 53 percent of adolescents in a large, federally funded study who said they made a virginity pledge denied doing so a year later, often after they had become sexually active.
Leslee Uhruh, president of the nonprofit National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, S.D., called Rosenbaum's study &"junk science.&"
I love the quote from Uhruh. Click here to see why she is qualified to rate a Harvard study as junk science.
I love the quote from Uhruh. Click here to see why she is qualified to rate a Harvard study as junk science.
