Government unworried by abstinence report

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A report that found some abstinence-only education programs do little to discourage teens from having sex only shows a small part of the picture, a Health and Human Services Department official said on Monday.

Newer sexual education programs are often more comprehensive and HHS is doing more to monitor them and make sure they are working, said Harry Wilson, associate commissioner at the Administration on Children, Youth and Family at HHS.

"We are taking it and managing the program. We are trying to collect as much data as can. We have got a study of 400 curricula going on," Wilson said in a telephone interview.

For the report issued Friday, Mathematica Policy Research Inc. interviewed 1,200 teen-agers in rural and urban communities in Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Virginia who had taken part in abstinence-only education programs four to six years before.

They compared their behaviors to 800 similar students who had not taken part in abstinence-only programs.

They found few differences. About 25 percent in both groups had already had sex with three or more partners and 23 percent of both groups reported having had sex and always using a condom.

Teens in both groups reported they had first had sex at just under the age of 15 on average.

Advocates of more comprehensive sexual education in school said the report showed that abstinence-only programs, which got mandated federal funding starting in 1998, do not work and are a waste of money.