CDC Reports, Other Stats Suggest Abstinence Message Is Catching On
by Mary Rettig
August 29, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The founder of a popular, abstinence-based sex-education program says teenagers are beginning to get the message that the best way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease is to abstain from sex outside marriage.Dr. Patricia Sulak, founder and director of the "Scott & White Worth the Wait Sex Education Program," says recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are encouraging. In its 2005 survey, the CDC found that about 47 percent of high school students reported having had sex, which is down from 54 percent of high school teens so reporting in 1991.
Sulak says the Journal of the American Medical Association also reported a drop in the number of teens getting herpes, and teen pregnancy rates are going down as well. "When I first started our sex ed program ten years ago in 1996," she notes, "there were around 550,000 teen births -- teens having babies -- in the United States every year. This number's down now to around 425,000."
Sulak admits, however, that some of the surveys indicating that fewer teens are having sex fail to ask adolescents about oral sex, which may skew the results somewhat. Still, she says there are reliable findings that show contemporary teens are increasingly likely to postpone sexual activity until after high school.
Another positive trend, the "Worth the Wait" program founder notes, is that more adults are joining in the effort to spread the abstinence message. "We are finding that healthcare professionals all across the United States are starting to get involved," she says, "and are starting to go into classrooms and youth groups, talking to kids and encouraging them to delay the onset of sexual activity for health reasons."
Dr. Sulak's work in the area of sex education began in 1996 when she collaborated with the Temple (Texas) Independent School District and began implementing a sex-education program in area schools. The award-winning Worth the Wait program, which she directs, has been adopted by several school districts across the state of Texas and beyond.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
