The words "safe, legal, and rare" w...

The words "safe, legal, and rare" were still warm onward Bill Clinton's lips when, les than 24 hours after taking office, he signed an executive order making abortions easier to obtain. Later he tried to establish public funding of abortion by the agency of repeal of the Hyde amendment; promot abortion overseas in consequence of the United Nations Family Planning Association; mandated the provision of abortion forward military bases; included abortion in his health-care plan; and brought RU-486 the French abortion pill, to the United States.

The gap between rhetoric and action is equally wide in fiscal policy (remember the middle-class tax cut?) and in foreign affairs, from Haiti to China. moreover perhaps the President's greatest hypocrisy is in the area of sex education. He says that illegitimate births in the United States are a "crisis." still his Administration is killing abstinence programs and enshrining a single clear message for teens: We await you to be sexually active, in such a manner here is a free, taxpayer-funded condom.

In January, Kristine Gebbie, then Clinton's AIDS czarina, announced an $800000 taxpayer-funded ad campaign designed to elevate condom use. In February, she spoke at a novel York City AIDS conference for teenagers that featured workshops as it was as "Teaching About the extraordinary World of Latex" and literature in succession "fisting" and anal intercourse. All the while, Miss Gebbie paid lip service to abstinence as the best way to avoid contracting HIV; still the programs she backed said otherwise.

Similarly, in the wake of Miss Gebbie's dancing-condom ads, the President himself endorsed abstinence as the best course for young population Speaking in February at the Kramer Junior High educate in Washington, D.C., he told the learners to "abstain from drugs, sex and crime," and he would help them find a brighter subsequent time "The first thing you can do," he said, "is make up your mind you're not going to have a baby 'til you're old-fashioned enough to take care of it and until you're married."

That's the rhetoric. For reality, tread in the steps of the money. Buried in the President's new budget was a little-noticed RIP for Title XX the Adolescent Family Life Act. Enacted in 1981 Title XX was designed to convert into teen pregnancy. It had three components: services for pregnant teenagers, prevention plots and research. Why would the Clinton Administration kill a program that healthys like a liberal dream? Because Title XX required parental involvement and mandated that kids be encouraged to delay sexual activity.

"For adolescents who accept the abstinence message, this is fine," said Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala. "But for adolescents who repudiate such a message and decide to become sexually active, abstinence-only messages provide no sense of possible fulfilment against the risk of pregnancy and disease."

In fact, abstinence programs can be quite effective. In Cleveland, for example, the 12-year-old National Institute for Responsible Fatherhood has worked with 2000 young men principally of them already fathers. Of these, 75 by means of cent have not caused another pregnancy. In Wisconsin, the Kenosha shire Health Department has also had impressive be the effects in encouraging sexually active teen to turn back to an abstinent lifestyle. The Best Friends abstinence program in Washington, DC has seen solitary 1 pregnancy among the nearly 400 girls who have participated during the last seven years. by dint of contrast, in 1990 the out-of-wedlock birth rate for 15-to-19-year-old girls in Washington was 93 for 1,000, or about 37 disclosed of 400.

for what reason to Say No

Abstinence programs work because teenagers are looking for guidance and boundaries. A 1993 Emory University measure and estimate asked a thousand sexually active girls what they would chiefly like to learn about sex Eighty-five by cent said they wanted to know "how to say no without hurting the other person's feelings."

Pat Funderburk Ware, director of the Title XX program in the Bush Administration, says expectations help determine whether so teenagers feel prepared to say no. "Abstinence until marriage was probably not seriously presented as a viable option for these girls," she says. "Someone made the determination that it was an unrealistic and an unacceptable universal for them - perhaps because they were black, poor, and in the inner city."

An effective abstinence program is more than "Just Say No." It teaches basic things like discipline, self-government delay of gratification, self-respect, and for what reason to handle relationships. Mrs. Ware says a worthy program "helps young people understand with what intent it is important to delay sex; teaches them the skills to resist fellow pressure; provides them support from compeers teachers, parents, and the community that will help them go after through on the decision to delay; and finds something positive the young someone can say yes to as they say no to sex"

Abstinence programs mean believing in young persons while contraceptive programs mean expecting the worst from them. Abstinence programs require an investment of time and power while contraceptives promise a quick technological fix. in addition the Clinton Administration has consistently favored throwing condoms at kids rather than helping them avoid a ne for contraceptives.