It's Magic: How Can McCain and Palin Still Support Ab-Only?

Pregnant seventeen-year-old? McCain aid Mark Salter responds, "This is an American family."

As a matter of fact, it is.  Teenage pregnancy doesn't just happen to Juno, Jamie Lynn, and the daughter of the Republican Party's vice-presidential nominee.  Nationwide, one in ten births comes to a teenage mother.  Three in ten girls in the United States become pregnant by age 20.  Recently, teen parenting has become more common: between 2005 and 2006, the teen birth rate increased by three percent.

Given the United States' teen pregnancy rate, the fact that a teenage daughter of a candidate for national office is pregnant shouldn't come as a surprise.  What should stop us in our tracks is the fact that both candidates on the Republican ticket still back abstinence-only programs, repeatedly proven ineffective at preventing pregnancy, decreasing risk for STI transmission and at delaying sexual initiation.  Responding to a questionnaire from the Eagle Forum while running for governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin wrote that "the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support."  McCain, for his part, says he "thinks he supports the President's policy."  Given that President Bush has enthusiastically shelled out upwards of $1 billion to abstinence-only programs, it's a fair bet that McCain would keep these ineffective measures on the gravy train, too.

Back in April 2007, Mathematica Policy Research released a congressionally-mandated study of four federally-funded abstinence-only programs, finding that abstinence-only programs are not only ineffective but harmful to teens. At the time, William Smith, vice president for public policy for SIECUS, stated, "This report should serve as the final verdict on the failure of the abstinence-only industry in this country."  But on conference call organized by abstinence-only advocates in the wake of the report's release, it became clear that abstinence-only advocates weren't going to rely on empirical evidence as justification for their position.  "The...spin I think is very important is not [program] effectiveness, but rather the values that are being taught," said one advocate. Whether or not these programs work is a "bogus issue," he continued.

Since the release of the Mathematica report, opposition to abstinence-only has only mounted.  When the Democratic-controlled Congress considered extending abstinence-only funding, ten scientists wrote to Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid to express their opposition.  Douglas Kirby's 2007 "Emerging Answers" report couldn't find any strong evidence of the impact of abstinence-only programs on sexual behavior.  By April 2008, Congress was holding its first oversight hearings on abstinence-only funding, and only one public health researcher spoke in favor of abstinence-only, opposing to the consensus reached by major American public health and medical organizations.  And his evidence was one study showing that abstinence-only programs can have a modest effect on seventh graders delaying sex.  The 2008 Republican Party platform shudders at the "22% of all federal programs that are ineffective or incapable of demonstrating results."  And yet their dogmatic support of abstinence-only funding survives.

But we don't only know that abstinence-only doesn't work.  Luckily for the American people, there's a proven alternative - comprehensive sexuality education.  Emerging Answers found that "Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavioral effects."  Contrary to claims made by abstinence-only advocates, comprehensive sex ed doesn't promote promiscuity.

Given this arsenal of evidence, is there any other conclusion to be made than that McCain, Palin, and the rest of the religious right (and the politicians who pander to them) don't actually care that much about teens getting pregnant?  "Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain are supporting abstinence-only because of ideology, not because it's doing a single thing for teenagers in America," says Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood. 

President of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, Leslee Unruh, spun Bristol Palin's pregnancy thusly: "Abstinence works. It works every single time...Blaming sex education for the failures of people who make a mistake is not fair."  The disconnect is radical: to Unruh, abstinence-only programs are a kind of values indoctrination, not an educational program to be evaluated by their effect on pupils' subsequent behavior.  She tries again: "If she was [given information about abstinence], it should have worked. But people make mistakes." Okay. So once teens are exposed to the force of abstinence-only logic, it will "work" its magic.  If it doesn't, it's a sign of moral turpitude on the part of the teens involved, not on the part of the adults who would restrict sexual health information from them.

Advocates of comprehensive sexuality education counter that we all know mistakes happen, and that, in fact, there's a way to teach for them - kind of like when your SCUBA gear fails, oxygen is still delivered.  Bristol Palin's pregnancy is "a reminder of how, even in strong families where youth are taught to refrain from sex until marriage, teens can make poor decisions," says Stephen Conley, executive director of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. "Teens need the reinforcement of school programs that give them the information and skills they need to take responsibility for their sexual health."  There are skills that can mitigate the effects of poor sexual decision-making - knowing about emergency contraception - and there are skills that can prevent poor sexual decision-making - keeping condoms accessible, strong sexual communication skills, knowledge about STI status.  But McCain and Palin oppose programs that would teach any of these. The McCain-Palin ticket, says Richards, "is completely out-of-touch -- the vast majority of people in America believe young people should get the information they need."

What ab-only proponents and supportive politicians seem to oppose is not unintended pregnancy but teens, specifically, teen girls, having access to information and education about their sexuality and sexual health.  For advocates of comprehensive sexuality education, dismantling disempowering stereotypes of female sexual behavior and teaching communication and negotiation skills is as significant a goal as dispensing information about how to prevent pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted infections.  But female passivity and male aggression are the very stereotypes abstinence-only programs rely on to set behavioral standards.  When the women's legal rights organization Legal Momentum studied abstinence-only curricula, it found that a "hidden curriculum on gender" that set up women as sexual gatekeepers responsible for keeping men's desire in check.

Teen child-bearing in the US costs taxpayers $9.1 billion. This year's  Democratic platform calls for support - including income support and pre- and post-natal health care - for teens and adult women wanting to carry unplanned pregnancies to term, in addition to backing comprehensive sexuality education and contraceptive access.  Too bad the Republican platform doesn't call for the education that could help teens prevent pregnancy.  Too bad the Republican platform calls for a constitutional amendment banning the right to terminate the pregnancies teens don't know how to prevent. And too bad the Republican platform makes no mention of the concrete support systems that could actually benefits the new teen moms who aren't quite lucky enough to be governor's daughters.