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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Is anyone actually surprised by this?
Posted by Jill | 6:03 AM
The legacy of abstinence education:
Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.

In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.

The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.

Is this actually a surprise to anyone? What IS a surprise is that anyone (I'm talking to YOU, Mr. President) is still buying into the notion that those who profess their faith loudly and often, and seek a larger role for religion in the public space, when the hypocrisy of those who profess Christianity the loudest has become so manifest of late.

And remember -- these people whose 10-to-14-year-olds are becoming pregnant (read more of the article for that one) are the ones who want to see abortion and contraceptive services barred from coverage under any form of health care reform.

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