Ohio Education Official Urges Return to Abstinence Programs
by Jim Brown
September 9, 2005
(AgapePress) - A spokesman for the Ohio Department of Public Health says lack of abstinence-until-marriage education is driving the extremely high rate of teenage promiscuity in one high school in the state, Timken High School, where 64 students are currently pregnant. That alarming statistic represents 13 percent of the school's female student population. Valerie Huber manages Ohio's abstinence education program and is also the state's Title V coordinator. She says in the case of Timken High, many of the female students want to have babies. However, she believes another factor is also fueling the teen pregnancy problem.
"There has not been an abstinence education program at that school for a minimum of two and a half years," Huber points out, "so the message of 'wait to have sex until you're married' has not been presented to those students for at least two and a half years." Nor, she adds, have the rationale and reasons for waiting been presented to the students in "a risk elimination-type model."
The abstinence education advocate believes Timken High School would do well to implement one of the two abstinence programs available in Stark County, where the school is located. "Now, within an abstinence program, it's not just a 'just say no' message," she asserts. "It's skill building, decision-making, future orientation."
These programs offer "a lot of things that will prepare the student not just to say no to something," Huber contends, "but to say yes to their future and help them to look beyond having a baby at 16 or 17 years of age."
Also, Huber emphasizes that abstinence education does not limit its focus to the young students in the schools where the programs are implemented. Another important part of Ohio's abstinence programs, she notes, is equipping parents with skills and strategies to reach their own children with healthy messages that will encourage the young people to make good decisions for their future lives.
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Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
