Does Abstinence-Only Education Reduce Teenage Pregnancy Rates?

Written by Kathrin F. Stranger-Hall and David W. Hall, the article “Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S.” argues that comprehensive sex education is more effective in lowering teen pregnancy rates than abstinence only sex education. As clearly stated by the authors, the claim of the article is that “abstinence-only education does not reduce teen pregnancy rates.” (Stanger-Hall 10) This point is worth arguing because sex education is expected to decrease the number of teenage pregnancies in the United States. If schools across the nation are only lecturing students on how to save sex for marriage, there is no education on having safe sex if they so choose to do. The authors define

Not only expecting the reader to share the same idea that comprehensive sex education is the more beneficial alternative, the authors also believe the reader considers the rate of teenage pregnancy in our country as a bad thing and that there needs to be some sort of action to decrease it. To assume that the reader believes teen pregnancy is bad is a safe assumption to make. Culturally, in the United States, teen pregnancy is not the norm. Although it may be safe to assume that teen pregnancy itself is bad, it is not as safe to assume that abstinence-only education is completely ineffective. Like the authors sated, there could be a lot of opposition to teaching middle school and high school students how to properly use contraception. Many people reason that showing students how to safely and knowledgably prevent pregnancies and STDs will only increase sexual behavior among teenagers (1). In addition to the warrants the authors make, the backing used to support their assumption that abstinence-only education is not effective is in the form of national data on the public opinion of adults that support comprehensive sex education programs. 82% of adults, ages 18 to 83, support comprehensive sex education while only 36% support abstinence-only education (8). The authors’ backing for this warrant is credible knowing that it comes from a sophisticated