Most Americans Favor Comprehensive Sex Education

Reuters Health Day reported on November 6, 2006 on a study published in the November, 2006 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that most Americans favor comprehensive sex education in spite of our abstinence only kooky federal government policy.

Regardless of their political leanings, the majority of American adults (80.4 percent) favors a balanced approach to sex education in schools, including teaching children about both abstinence and other ways of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, a University of Pennsylvania study finds.

The findings suggest that the U.S. government's support for abstinence-only programs doesn't reflect broad public support for comprehensive sex education, say researchers from the school's Annenberg Public Policy Center.

They noted that 25 percent of American youth have sex by age 15, 37.5 percent by age 16 and 46.9 percent by age 17.

Now that the Democrats are back in control of the congress perhaps we will see a shift in public health policy that is based more on social science and less on conservative religious ideology.

Link: MedlinePlus: Most Americans Favor Comprehensive Sex Education.