Abstinence Promotion and Teen Family Planning: The Misguided Drive for Equal Funding
By Cynthia Dailard

The cornerstone of the Bush administration's approach to reducing teen pregnancy--and a key component of its effort to promote a conservative moral and religious agenda--is to dramatically increase funding for abstinence-only education. The central argument driving this effort is that there should be "parity" between what the federal government spends on providing contraceptive services to teenagers and what it spends on educational efforts that exclusively promote abstinence outside of marriage and prohibit discussion of contraception. Since the federal government allegedly spends $135 million annually on contraceptive services to teens--at best, an overly simplistic estimate first propounded by the Bush campaign during the heat of the 2000 presidential race--and only $100 million on abstinence-only education, federal funds should be significantly increased in favor of abstinence, or so their argument goes. Along these lines, the Bush administration has announced that it will seek "full parity," through a $33 million increase, for FY 2003.


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