Analysis Shows Birth Control Reports Misleading

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Analysis Shows Birth Control Reports Misleading

Special Report - November 13, 2007
Recently, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the majority of adults in a recent AP-Ipsos poll favored the distribution of birth control to children in public schools. The headline from one AP report on the poll read: "Most OK Birth Control for Schools." But a review of the AP poll by the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) shows that the majority of adults polled by the AP were not parents, and respondents were closely divided over the controversial issues of birth control in school and sex education in general. In fact, only 37 percent of those polled by the AP were the parents of school-aged children. Although the majority (67 percent) of respondents in the poll supported birth control in schools, only 30 percent favored giving birth control to any students who wanted it, while 37 percent said birth control should only be distributed to students with parental consent. Thirty percent did not favor giving birth control to students at all. In addition, nearly half (46 percent) of the respondents agreed that making birth control available to teenagers would "encourage them to have sexual intercourse earlier than they would have," and the same percentage (46 percent) said that "emphasizing morality and abstinence" was the "better way to reduce the number of pregnancies among teenagers." In October, a school board in Portland, Maine ignited a national debate over contraceptives in schools when it voted to allow a middle school health center to distribute birth control to its students who are in sixth to eighth grades. According to the AP report, Nancy Brener of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that less than one percent of middle schools and almost five percent of high schools offer condoms to students.

"Children deserve more than to simply be handed condoms or prescribed birth control pills," said Valerie Huber, Executive Director of the NAEA. "Providing contraception is a band-aid approach to a much larger issue. Abstinence education is the most responsible medium for teaching students the risks involved in having casual sex, and preparing children to make the safest choices about their own sexual behavior."