How to Waste 50 Million Dollars

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The things that could be done with $50 Million. Oh well, looks like teen pregnancies will be increasing.

Panel votes to restore abstinence education money 

(AP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — A Senate committee voted Tuesday night to restore $50 million a year in federal funding for abstinence-only education that President Barack Obama has pushed to eliminate.
The 12-11 vote by the Senate Finance Committee came over objections from its chairman, Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.
Two Democrats — Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas — joined all 10 committee Republicans in voting "yes" on the measure by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah.
The measure would still have to pass the full House and Senate. Hatch said abstinence education had been shown to work, though Baucus disagreed. Obama had proposed in his 2010 budget to direct money spent on abstinence-only education to broader teen pregnancy-reduction programs.
An alternate measure offered by Baucus also passed. Baucus' measure, which passed 14-9, would make money available for education on contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, among other things, in addition to abstinence. Lawmakers will have to reconcile the two measures, both approved during debate on a sweeping health overhaul bill, as the legislation moves forward.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Well Duh! As If We Didn't Already Know

Image by Polina Sergeeva via Flickr

NYT parenting blogger Lisa Belkin writes about the correlation between teen pregnancy and religion. In her post she cites a recent Reproductive Health Journal study by Drexel University and the University of Pittsburgh and the results are nothing less than surprising, that is, if you are religious. 

As most atheists and other people of reason have known for a long time religion has a significant impact on teen pregnancy and generally in a negative way. As the father of a 14 year-old daughter (15 in two weeks) I have striven to make sex an open topic in our house. While we do not have explicit conversations, my wife usually has those with our daughter, I nevertheless know my daughters thoughts on the subject and I know that she will make an appropriate choice when the time right.

Religion’s Link to Teen Pregnancy

By Lisa Belkin

A report this week in the journal Reproductive Health describes what researchers call “a strong association” between the teenage birth rate of a particular state and its “level of religiosity.”
The correlation is not what you might expect. The more religious the state, the higher the rates of teen pregnancy.
Joseph Strayhorn, an adjunct faculty member with Drexel University and the University of Pittsburgh, and Jillian Strayhorn reached their conclusions by analyzing data from the Pew Forum’s US Religious Landscapes Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first asks respondents to agree or disagree with such statements as ‘There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion’ or ‘Scripture should be taken literally, word for word’. The second tracks the rate of teen pregnancy in every state from year to year.
How to explain the disconnect? It could be that more religious teens are having sex than less religious teens, hence more of them become pregnant. It could also be that the percentage of teens who become pregnant in each state is similar, but the percentage who terminate in the less religious states is higher, leading to more reported pregnancies and births (although the authors did take some steps to adjust for that.) Or it could be, Strayhorn suggests, “that religious communities in the US are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself”.