The U.S. has spent about $1 billion on abstinence-only education in the last decade. Here’s how presidential candidates line up on the issue.

Still a Puritan Nation? Most ‘08 Candidates Support Abstinence Education
By Alison Bowen

An end to abstinence-only sex education was at the top of the list when 600 self-described feminists met in New York recently to rally their ranks and craft a platform for U.S. presidential lobbying.

Abstinence-only — for which President Bush proposes a 2008 budget of $204 million — has avid supporters and wary detractors, who want to find a more comprehensive way to present sex education.

In March, three members of Congress introduced a bill to authorize federal funds for states’ comprehensive sex education that offers menu of options from abstinence to contraception and abortion. The Responsible Education About Life Act — or the REAL Act as the bill is known — was sponsored by Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J.; Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; and Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.

The following month a congressional study found that abstinence-only education — which emphasizes chastity, or abstaining from sex, as the best practice for teens — did not significantly delay their decisions whether to have sex.

Over a dozen states have dodged abstinence-only curricula for their schools by declining the funds that mandate it.

On Nov. 14 Virginia became the latest when Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s proposed budget eliminated the $275,000 matching grant that is part of the federal funding.

Plenty of GOP boosters remain on Capitol Hill, however.

In the wake of President Bush’s Oct. 3 veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — the low-cost health insurance for families who don’t qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford private insurance — some Democratic advocates of SCHIP tried to sweeten it for Republicans by attaching a $28 million increase in abstinence funding. That effort failed, but it showed the extent to which abstinence funding is viewed as a potent bipartisan bargaining.

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