Democrats INCREASE funding for discredited abstinence education

[ck4829]

The Democratic leadership of the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Service, and Education (LHHS) Sub-Committee set science and commonsense aside by increasing the funding for discredited abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. Despite a congressionally mandated report that found these programs do not work to help teens delay sexual initiation, House leadership allocated $141 million (an increase of $27.8 million) to continue feeding America's young people misinformation.

"Let's face it, with friends like these, who needs conservative Republicans?" said James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth. "By continuing to fund these ineffective programs, the House Democratic leadership has signaled that the health and well-being of America's teens are not their priority. Young people and their parents should be outraged"

Since 1982, Congress has allocated over $1.5 billion for abstinence-only- until-marriage programs that censor information about birth control and the health benefits of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. The 10-year study conducted by Mathematica, Inc. found that "Youth in the program group were no more likely than control group youth to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age."

"The facts are supposed to matter when it came to public policy," added Wagoner. "But with this decision, the leaders in the new Congress have exposed themselves as public health frauds -- ignoring the evidence and research -- in favor of politics and appeasement."

http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_58655.shtml

[KittyWampus]

1. Article doesn't say exactly which bill's referred to. Piss poor journalism. We've no idea what else

was in there.

The extra money might have been a compromise with GOP'ers to get funds for something else necessary.