Sexual Abstinence

Safer sex education should not be taught to adolescents as a viable alternative to abstinence, according to Dr. Joe McIlhaney, founder and president of the Medical Institute for Sexual Health in Austin, TX. McIlhaney notes that adolescents and young adults are at the highest risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STD), in part because of their still immature reproductive systems. However, behavior also plays a key role; the age at which a person starts having sex and the number of different partners he or she has are two primary factors in STD infection.

As an example, McIlhaney cites a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey that found that nearly 20 percent of students have had at least four sexual partners by the time they reached the 12th grade. Moreover, various studies indicate that the percentage of sexually active teenagers who consistently use condoms is between 5 and 40 percent, and only about half of adolescents report using condoms correctly. Statistics also show that 25 percent of all new HIV infections are in individuals younger than 22, and that 25 percent of sexually active teenagers contract a STD each year.

Although opponents have argued that abstinence education is "unrealistic," McIlhaney asserts that "it is certainly no more unrealistic than expecting teens to achieve ideal condom usage." Furthermore, he adds that while safer sex education can offer only risk reduction, abstinence attempts to eliminate that risk.