Recently, a Fresno County, California judged ruled against an abstinence-only sex education program because the school districted did not provide appropriate teachings on sexual health and HIV prevention (Reilly, 2015). This district also showed videos that were biased against individuals of the LGBT community and made disparaging remarks against non-virgin women (Reilly, 2015).
Many times, along with abstinence only programs, virginity pledges are made. A virginity pledge is basically a promise made to remain abstinent until marriage and is mainly associated with religious organizations (Bruckner and Bearman, 2001). Even so, pledges are also part of many abstinence-only programs that are taught in public schools, any mention of God or Jesus is usually just left out. In a study on the effectiveness of these virginity pledges at preventing pledgers, it was found that 60% of those surveyed had broken their vow 5 years after the original study. Teens who took the pledge began engaging in vaginal intercourse later than non-pledgers, still, pledgers were more likely to engage in oral or anal sex than teens who did not pledge, and were less likely to use condoms once they became sexually active. .
The United States that has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any first world country and approximately 615,000 teen girls will become pregnant this year (Sex Education, 2015). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that teen birth rates in America have fallen by 57% since 1991 due to sex and contraception education (Kleeman, 2014). A survey done by the Department of Health Services in Seattle, Washington, tested 1,719 heterosexual teens between the ages of 15-19 about their formal sex education received before their first sexual intercourse (Kohler, 2008). About one in four adolescents aged 15-19 received abstinence education without receiving any instruction about birth control in 2006–2008.
