Repro Health Hub

Congress recently ended its federal funding for abstinence-only sex education programs, and not a minute too soon. A new report by the Guttmacher Institute demonstrates that after a decade and a half of decline, teen pregnancy, abortion and birth rates in the United States have begun to rise. Between 2005 and 2006, teen pregnancy rates increased by 3% nationwide, and teen abortion rates by 1%. Teen births rose steadily between 2005 and 2006, and again between 2006 and 2007.

The Guttmacher report highlights the link between the recent emphasis on abstinence-only education and the rise in teen pregnancy. According to senior public policy associate Heather Boonstra, the increase in teen pregnancy “coincides with an increase in rigid abstinence-only-until-marriage programs…A strong body of research shows that these programs do not work.” Even when the teen pregnancy rate was at its lowest, in the early 2000s, the United States still had a higher rate of teen pregnancy than other industrialized nations. Continuing to deny teens’ access to comprehensive sexuality education will not prevent a further rise in teen pregnancies. Richard S. Guido, chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’s Committee on Adolescent Health Care, has decried the usefulness of abstinence-only, saying that “the idea that most teens will wait to have sex indefinitely is rigid and impractical.” Meanwhile, Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, agrees that it is time for a different approach: “This new study makes it crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work.”

The Guttmacher report demonstrates the need for comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education in all schools in the United States. Congress has recently taken an important first step and established $114 million for a teen pregnancy prevention program that will provide much-needed federal funds to help support comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention programs and sexuality education programs across the country.

The National Institute for Reproductive Health, in partnership with advocates across the nation, is committed to ensuring that young people have access to comprehensive sexuality education programs in their schools and communities.

By Sasha Albert, Sexuality Education Project Intern

New Year’s Eve is the biggest night of the year—including for birth control accidents. In fact, the stats are pretty startling: use of emergency contraception (EC) more than doubles in the first days of the new year.

That’s why the National Institute’s Back Up Your Birth Control campaign has launched a special effort to remind women that, if they do have a birth control mishap on the big night, EC is available over-the-counter at pharmacies, even in a single pill. At DontDropTheBall.org you can even send funny morning-after messages to all your friends to remind them that EC can get them out of a pickle on January 1st.

But first watch the hilarious “OMG, I sent that text to Grandma?!” video that started it all. Because if you can accidentally text your Grandma on New Year’s Eve, what else can go wrong?

Finally, share some of these fun facts about EC with all your friends this New Year’s…

• You can get EC over-the-counter if you’re 17 or older.
• There is now a convenient, one-pill version of EC.
• EC can help prevent pregnancy when taken within 120 hours of unprotected sex but is more effective the sooner you take it.
• EC is 95% effective when taken within 24 hours of unprotected sex.
• EC is kept behind the counter so you will need to ask the pharmacist for it.
• EC is NOT the “abortion pill,” Mifeprex™ or RU-486, and will not terminate an existing pregnancy.
• EC is a higher dosage of the same hormones found in many birth control pills.

By Maya Dusenbery

Great news for comprehensive sex education supporters! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention commissioned a report on comprehensive risk reduction education programs and now recommends them for adolescents 10-19 years old because they were found to reduce engagement in any sexual activity, frequency of sexual activity, number of partners, frequency of unprotected sexual activity and incidence of STIs, while also increasing use of protection against pregnancy and STIs. In addition, the report also analyzed abstinence until marriage education programs and found that there is insufficient evidence to prove those programs are effective because of the little impact it made on the behaviors listed above.

This is a huge and exciting step for a government entity to acknowledge the difference that comprehensive sex education makes! It is particularly important as Congress is on the verge of providing federal funding for comprehensive sex education programs for the first time.

The full report from the Task Force can be found here.

By Ally Fujii

The Urban Initiative for Reproductive Health has begun! The Rocky Mountain West Regional Summit, the first of four regional summits that will take place in the next month, was held last week in Denver. Wendy Norris covered the summit on RH Reality Check:

After weathering eight years of conservative attacks, the pro-choice community held high hopes that the Obama Administration, bolstered by democratic majorities in Congress, would signal an end to partisan bickering over federal funding for comprehensive care and the tedious national obsession with abortion.

With that optimism scattering to the four winds of manufactured political controversy, the National Institute for Reproductive Health is organizing the Urban Initiative for Reproductive Heath, four regional urban summits to bring providers, policymakers, activists, funders and legislators together to share effective program strategies and localized incidence data.

“There is a limitless potential to create change for women’s health at a local level,” said NIRH president Kelli Conlin at a Sept. 23 kick-off event in Denver. “What people here realize, much more clearly than people out East or in Washington, is that not everything has to be a knock-down, drag-out fight. You can get things done without burning down the house.”

Seeking common ground was a frequent theme throughout the discussions on sexuality education, underserved populations, and the intersection of reproductive freedom and economic self-sufficiency. Check out the whole piece to read about the lessons learned by our partners from Missoula, MT to Portland, OR.

Next, we’re headed to Atlanta for the Southeastern Regional Summit on Sept. 30-Oct. 2, followed by Chicago, Ill., (Oct. 21-23) and Los Angeles, Calif., (Oct. 29-30). Visit the Urban Initiative for Reproductive Health website to stay up-to-date!

In an effort find “common ground” on policies to prevent teen pregnancies and reduce the need for abortion, the White House has begun a series of discussions among a diverse group of abortion-rights supporters and opponents. According to the Wall Street Journal, the initial meetings, which began a month ago and are being led by domestic policy advisor Melody Barnes, have revealed areas of potential compromise as well as stark disagreements.

From the start, the polarizing question of whether abortion should be legal was taken off the table. Instead, the discussion has centered on issues surrounding sex education, responsible use of contraception, maternal and child health, pregnancy discrimination, and adoption. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Participants say that suggestions included: improving education about use of contraception; better access to emergency contraception (which can be used after sex); improving education about sex, relationships and the “sacredness of sex”; stamping out employment discrimination against pregnant women; improving family-leave policies; and encouraging adoption.

However, the WSJ notes that even without the hot-button topic of abortion, there are some major divergences in priorities and approach between the two sides: “Participants said that abortion opponents tended to focus on efforts to help pregnant women keep their babies, while the abortion-rights camp focused on preventing unwanted pregnancy.”

Consequently, many abortion-rights opponents support more funding for “pregnancy crisis centers,” which discourage women from having abortions by posing as women’s health clinics and giving out inaccurate information. Clearly not something the abortion-rights community is going to get behind anytime soon.

And while abortion-rights advocates want more support for contraception, some opponents are “unenthusiastic” about that. In fact, as Judy Berman points out in a good analysis on Salon, that’s a bit of an understatement. Many anti-choice activists are downright antagonistic towards efforts to increase access to birth control and emergency contraception.

Furthermore, given the overlap between the anti-choice movement and the abstinence-only camp, odds are good that some additional conflicts over sex education will crop up eventually.

Any earnest effort to reduce the need for abortion must include comprehensive sex education and better access to contraception. So long as a large segment of the anti-choice movement also happens to be opposed to these very things, the search for common ground could be more difficult than the White House anticipated.

By Maya Dusenbery

Keep your eyes out this summer for the new documentary, Sex Positive, a film that explores the history of the safe sex movement. Most folks don’t realize that the safe sex movement did not come from the medical community or government programs, but was driven by community activists, sex workers and porn stars in response to the AIDS epidemic. Activists Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen along with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend were some of the earliest voices of the time advocating for safer sex practices and behaviors and they received backlash from their own communities for doing so.

Richard Berkowitz appeared at Columbia University yesterday for a screening of the film. His message from 25 years ago is just as relevant today. Honest and open dialogue about sexual behaviors and risks is one way a community can take action against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, STI’s and unintended pregnancy. He pointed out that the evidence is there. If you look at the education campaigns of other developed countries, along with their STI and teen pregnancy rates, it is clear that the U.S. is doing something wrong.

By Monika Grzeniewski

Another pat on the back for the Guttmacher Institute! Earlier this year, the research center published some enlightening information about the recent trends in abortion rates within the U.S. and have now released their most recent research is a study on sexual behavior of American teens.

According to the study led by Laura Lindberg, the Institute analyzed information about teens between the ages of 15-19 taken from the 2002 National Survey of Family growth, with findings that demystify the myth that teens perform oral sex as a way of both being sexually active and remaining virgins.

The findings were as follows

• 55 percent of teenagers have engaged in heterosexual oral sex
• 50 percent have engaged in vaginal sex; and 11 percent have had anal sex.
• Both oral and anal sex are much more common among teens who have already engaged in vaginal intercourse than among those who haven’t, suggesting that teens initiate a range of sexual activities around the same time, rather than substitute one for another, Lindberg says.

“Our research shows that this supposed substitution of oral sex for vaginal sex is largely a myth,” Lindberg said in a statement. “There is no good evidence that teens who have not had intercourse engage in oral sex with a series of partners.”

The study will be published in the July issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Studies like these are imperative to understanding teenage sexuality, how to best prepare those who are sexually active to act safely and be aware of possible risks, and how to shape policy that effectively support these findings.

“The study has clear policy implications,” said Lindberg. “While oral and anal sex carry no risk of pregnancy, engaging in these behaviors can nevertheless put teens at risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Counseling and education should take into account total STI risk by addressing the full range of behaviors that teens engage in, including oral and anal sex. It is crucial that teens receive evidence-based education and counseling about STI risks and protective behaviors for all types of sexual activity. The federal government’s exclusive emphasis on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs does not give teens the skills and information they need to be safe.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Over the past month, there has been a lot of talk about sex education in this country (or a lack thereof) and we learned the sad truth of why education is necessary. The most recent study from the University of Washington in Seattle that was released a week ago was the most telling of the current state of sex ed. The team of researchers based their finding in data pulled from a national survey of teenagers conducted back in 2002, and the results reaffirm everything we’ve suspected for years now.

The findings go as follows: That year, one in four teens received abstinence-only education, nine percent received no sex ed at all, and the other two thirds had access to comprehensive education that included information about birth control. The teens that had access to comprehensive sex ed were 60% less likely to become pregnant or impregnating someone else than someone receiving no education and 30% less likely than those with abstinence-only education. The leader of the study, Pamela Kohler, said in a statement, “There was no evidence to suggest that abstinence-only education decreased the likelihood of ever having sex or getting pregnant.”

This comes to absolutely no surprise to us- it only further emphasizes the need for accurate information to be accessible to teens. Fortunately, there are multiple efforts to tackle this issue from new fronts online, like Scarleteen, a fabulous website dedicated to young adult sex education.

The organization believes that sex education should have a role beyond the classroom and that sex ed is about more than just birth control and safe sex. With a holistic approach to informing youth about sex, sexuality, and relationships, Scarleteen offer its nearly 30,000 users a valuable resource to answer anonymous questions and provide a fun forum for wide ranging sex topics.

And for that, they are our Repro Hero of the Week. Bravo, Scarleteen!

The Center for Disease Control has just published a new report, and we don’t like the results one bit. According to the CDC, 1 in 4 teenage girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted infection. Here is a breakdown of the findings according to the Wall Street Journal: 

“An estimated 3.2 million girls ages 14 to 19, or about 26% of that age group, are infected, and the rate is highest among black girls, the study found. Nearly half the blacks surveyed had at least one sexually transmitted infection, compared with 20% among both whites and Mexican-American teens. The vast majority — about 18% — were infected with strains of human papillomavirus, or HPV, that can cause genital warts and cervical cancer, the CDC said.”

The 2008 National STD Prevention Conference in Chicago, where this important information was officially announced today, provided revealing information about contraceptive use and STI testing among young girls. The CDC released findings from a separate study that showed that even though most (82%) sexually active 15 to 24 year old women received contraceptive or STD/HIV services, only 39% receive both which indicates that many women at high risk are not receiving necessary prevention services. 

So why, exactly, are these numbers so shockingly high?  

What many people, including Planned Parenthood of America, consider the root of the problem is the lack of comprehensive sex education. “The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure and teenage girls are paying the real price,” the organization’s president Cecile Richards said. 

What is probably most staggering is the racial disparity these studies show. Of the total amount of chlamydia cases, young black women were found to make up nearly half of the cases. The director of the CDC’s STD prevention division John Douglas points to limited access to health care as a possible cause, an obstacle that creates delays in seeking care, fewer doctors visits, and is completely unacceptable. 

How do we combat these STI rates? With the help of organizations like the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). The advocacy group has a strong record of providing accurate information and comprehensive education about sexuality, sexual health, and sexual rights. For the past 40 years SIECUS has been pushing for effective public policy in sex-related issues and created much needed (as the CDC has shown) reliable sexual health information for educators, health professionals, and communities around the country.

Good news for Iowans! Just last week the state’s Governor Chet Culver agreed to reject hundreds of thousands of federal dollars for abstinence only education, which will make the state the seventeenth to reject the federal funding under Title V.  The title provides approximately 40 million dollars in funding nationwide for the ineffective and purely ideological sexual education method, and in the past year there has been a huge trend of rejecting these funds. Culver made his decision following insistence from teen pregnancy prevention organization, FutureNet. 

Rhonda Chittenden, executive director of the organization, said, “Iowa must end this poor fiscal and public health policy now. There is no reliable evidence to date that these abstinence-only programs impact the long-term behavioral outcomes at which they aim, such as the delay of sexual initiation and reduction of adolescent pregnancies and STI/HIV infections.” 

FutureNet’s commitment to progressive change in their state has caught our eye and earned them the title of Hero of the Week! Here is their kick ass mission statement:

The mission of FutureNet is to support within Iowa a leadership network concerned with issues of adolescent pregnancy prevention, parenting, and sexual health.

The organization is not only pressuring Governor Culver to abstain from abstinence-only but also has several other programs that promote positive and effective sex education. Their TxT (Talking Sex Together) campaign merges youth-friendly text messaging with sex education to encourage communication that will help prevent teen pregnancy and inform teens about safe sex. Also worthy of mentioning is the organization’s initiative called Touchstones: Sexual Health Measures that Matter. This multi-year project aims to ensure that by 2012 all sex education in the state of  Iowa will be designed and implemented according to science-based practice.

Great job, Futurenet!