SEX ED

Bush Era Saw Teen Pregnancy Trend

Abstinence education apparently didn't take.

What kind of lessons can we learn here? During the Bush era, when abstinence education received increased funding, reports of teen pregnancy and STDs "rose sharply," according to a new report from the CDC. Birth rates had been in decline since 1991, but that trend has reversed in more than half the states since 2005, according to the Guardian. The report also finds that syphilis has increased by 50 percent among adolescent girls and that gonorrhea and AIDS among teens are on the rise as well. Abstinence-education advocates say the problem is not the failure of their curriculum, but that they need more money to promote their "no sex before marriage" message.