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Opinion

Program aimed at wrong group 

Colin Ferguson
Opinion Columnist 

The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled new guidelines for its $50 million abstinence education program. Advocates say abstinence education is about reinforcing the idea that the only safe way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases is abstaining from sexual activity. 

The program in question is now aimed at a different demographic -- namely all single people in their 20s. That's right, 20-something singles are now being told to wait until marriage as a part of federal policy.

Critics of the new guidelines suggest that changes were spurred by ideological shifts and not a desire to improve public health. 

The new DHHS guidelines allow states to use federal grants to "identify groups" of people most likely to "bear children out of wedlock" between the ages of 12 and 29 and then use those funds to "support decisions to delay sexual activity until marriage."

Legislators might find it hard to identify groups of people they think are more susceptible to having sexual relations. The whole notion sounds a bit suspect. It would be hard to determine which groups are at greater risk of bearing children out of wedlock. 

While some parents are bound to each other by matrimony, marriage is not a necessary provision for partners that won't abandon their child. Marriage isn't tied with greater financial security or a parent's ability to raise his or her child. Children of abusive parents can attest to that. 

Dissolving marriages doesn't help either. More than half of all marriages today will end in divorce. Even if marriage provided security for a child, it's is a highly insecure measure, and when marriage dissolves, the child's security may disappear.

While many would say that it is most desirable for children to have two married parents, this is not a matter for the department to weigh-in on. 

As a federal department charged with looking out for public health, the DHHS should be concerned with human welfare at a basic level. 

While the DHHS has the prerogative to say that children need reliable food, shelter, education, healthcare and parental figures, it is not necessary to tie all of those things to marriage, a secondary characteristic that ensures none of these needs.

The last phrase is the most upsetting. These programs must "support decisions to delay sexual activity until marriage."

The Administration for Children and Families, led by Dr. Wade F. Horn, released these new guidelines. Horn has espoused an ideology like that of groups that advocate legislation though fundamentalist Christian morality. He may have a conflict of interest. Abstinence education in schools has been a focal point for lobbying groups. They say their values include the postponement of sexual activity until after marriage, a key moral stance for many Christians.

The ACF forgets that we have many effective preventative measures that do not require our 20-29 demographic to avoid sex, including -- but not limited to -- condoms and "the pill." While abstinence advocates say that neither is 100 percent effective, contraceptive does decrease the risk of pregnancy -- something which abstinence education has failed to do. 

Abstinence education hasn't been successful among high school students. Those who made promises to remain abstinent were less likely to use contraceptives when they had sex, which they had at about the same frequency as those who made no such pledge. If high school students aren't likely to listen, it makes no sense to try the same with adults. 

The only logical conclusion is that through the ACF, $50 million of public funding is being diverted to programs that act out of furthering a specific ideology -- a religious one at that. 

The ACF is doing everything in its power to preserve and worsen a problem that already exists, for the sake of an ideology that federal money should not be used to support.

Send comments to dccampus@mail.uh.edu