US Teen Abstinence-Only Crusade

The Teen Abstinence-Only Crusade: Bush's Domestic Sex Policy By DAVID ROSEN

During the first one hundred hours of the new 110th Congress, the Democrats plan to defy expectations by showing that they have a backbone. They've announced their intention to introduce legislation that would toughen ethics rules, increase the minimum wage, increase support for student loans, back stem-cell research and authorize Medicare to negotiate drug costs with the pharmaceutical companies.

Unfortunately, they have decided to avoid the grander failures of the Bush administration, notably the occupation of Iraq, immigration and the abstinence-only adolescent sex policy.
The Bush administration's abstinence-only program toward teen sex codifies the deepest evangelical Christian fear of pleasure as public policy. It is the domestic corollary to its disastrous international PEPFAR Crusade. (PEPFAR is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). According to the ACLU, the federal government has spent more than $700 million since 1997 on abstinence-only programs; this year alone it has allocated approximately $170 million.

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