Under the Bush Administration, federal support for “abstinence-only” education programs has expanded rapidly. As a result, abstinence-only education, which promotes abstinence from sexual activity without teaching basic facts about contraception, now reaches millions of children and adolescents each year. This report evaluates the content of the most popular abstinence-only curricula used by grantees of the largest federal abstinence initiative, SPRANS (Special Programs of Regional and National Significance Community-Based Abstinence Education. The curricula used in
SPRANS and other federally funded programs are not reviewed for accuracy by the federal government. The report finds that over 80% of the abstinence-only curricula, used by over twothirds of SPRANS grantees in 2003, contain false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.
The report finds numerous examples of errors. Serious and pervasive problems with the accuracy of abstinence-only curricula may help explain why these programs have not been shown to protect adolescents from sexually transmitted diseases and why youth who pledge abstinence are significantly less likely to make informed choices about precautions when they do have sex.