Today's Editorials: Why Abstinence-Only Sex Ed is Like Chicken Soup
WaPo ... highlights the results of a recent study that shows abstinence-only sex education to be "like chicken soup for a cold: It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't provide a cure, either," and argues that young people need programs that encourage them to "delay having sex until they are ready to handle the risk and responsibility and that encourage sexually active youths to use contraception" ... argues that the system for keeping dangerous truckers off our roads needs to be revised because it has done little to reduce the number of people who are killed or hurt in serious truck crashes each year.
LAT ... argues that the United States and China should work to avoid an all-out trade war with each other, specifically urging Chinese officials to fulfill the commitments they made when they joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 ... criticizes the Supreme Court for deciding not to hear a whistle-blower case in which an IBM employee sued his company because it fired him after he reported hearing a co-worker call two African Americans "black monkeys": In passing up the case, "the justices did more than close the courthouse door to an individual with a compelling story," the editors write. "They placed a cloud of uncertainty over the scope of the Civil Rights Act while weakening one of their own precedents."
NYT ... writes that Moktada al-Sadr's decision to pull his followers from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's cabinet represents a new low for Iraq's government and the United State's fortunes there: "This squeeze play leaves the Bush administration holding what looks like an even weaker political hand in Baghdad than it held before," the editors say ... urges Congress to support the Student Loan Sunshine Act, which would make it a federal crime for lenders to offer college officials "anything of value in exchange for the right to do business at a given school" ... encourages Congress to pass a measure granting the District of Columbia a voting member in the House of Representatives, arguing that anything less equals "taxation without representation."
WSJ ... argues, as the Senate prepares to vote on a bill that will allow the government to negotiate drug prices under the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, that price controls for drugs are a "threat" to public health because they delay treatments for the most serious diseases.
By Rob Anderson |
April 18, 2007; 6:12 AM ET
Previous: Cross Country: More on Virginia Tech; Edwards, Huckabee and Kucinich |
Next: Today's Columns: The Strongest Case for Barack Obama
Posted by: nzo | April 18, 2007 08:00 AM
Abstinence only sex education not only denies the realities of human sexuality, it also doesn't work. Humans are biologically at their peak in their teens and twenties, sexually and otherwise. We continue to deny this simple fact yet wonder why these programs are not successful. I have 2 teenage daughters who think these school programs are a joke, as do most of their peers. Being responsible about your sexuality does not mean promiscuity. Virginity is not a "prize". Use birth control, be responsible and stop this antiquated notion of saving sex for marriage, another institution that is headed for obsolesence because it, too, denies human nature.
Posted by: AGalvin | April 18, 2007 02:49 PM
In ancient times, you did not have to believe in God to agree with its view of sex. Abstinence until marriage made perfect sense in a world where most people married in their teens and nothing was known about STDs except that sex was somehow involved. Nowadays it is much easier to rise economically if you put off raising a family until your career is well underway, and we know a lot more about STDs and how to manage them. America is in trouble because we waste energy and money like powder-wigged aristocrats, not because we broke old pronouncements from the bible about our private lives.
Posted by: toddpw | April 18, 2007 07:27 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Having severe restrictions folded into sex ed creates an illusion which results in adolescent decision making, which is always risky. Adolescences is already a conflicted condition between adult illusion and youthful perceptions.
The system from which abstinence is suggested also has WAR as its final feature, and all these absolute controls are the very thing the human species needs to come to grips with if we are going to accompany this planet into the future. If we had real sex ed alot of pain and malfunction could be avoided, yet the 'system' finds a great deal of economic windfall there.