Study Says Abstinence Responsible for Drop in Teen Pregnancy Rates

Special Report - April 15, 2003
Abstinence, not contraceptive use, was the major contributor to the decline in birth and pregnancy rates among unmarried teens between 1991 and 1995, according to a new study published in the journal, Adolescent and Family Health (AFH). Researchers compared the birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers age 15 to 19 during the early 1990s and found that abstinence accounted for 67 percent of the drop in pregnancies among unmarried girls. These findings contradict previous studies promoted by comprehensive sex education proponents, such as a 1999 report from the Alan Guttmacher Institute that linked the dropping birth and pregnancy rates among teens to increases in contraceptive use. That study claimed that 75 percent of the decline was due to more teens using contraceptives, and attributed only 25 percent to increases in abstinence. According to the authors of the new study, their research was more comprehensive than the Alan Guttmacher study, which grouped married and unmarried teens together and considered all teens who had ever had sex to be at-risk for pregnancy. "We took into account important statistics on girls who are married as well as those who had not been sexually involved for more than a year," said Dr. Joanna Mohn, the AFH study's lead researcher, in a recent press release. The findings of this landmark study show that abstinence-only sex education works and underscore the need for more federal funding of abstinence-until-marriage education. Congress will be debating the issue soon, as lawmakers consider whether to renew the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which included $50 million per year for abstinence programs.

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