Bristol Palin is paid $262,500 for abstinence campaign

UPDATED
Dancing With the Stars alum Bristol Palin, the daughter of vice presidential candidate turned reality TV star Sarah Palin, never went to college or held a full-time job, but she earned more than the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009.

According to tax papers unveiled April 6, 2011, the younger Ms Palin was paid $262,500, in 2009, for 20 days of work as an ambassador for teen-pregnancy prevention by the non-profit group the Candie's Foundation.

The high school grad was paid another $70,000 in 2010 for less than two weeks of work.

In 2009, John Roberts — a 56-year-old Harvard Law alum — earned $223,500 to helm the federal judicial system of the United States.

Apparently abstinence advocacy is more lucrative.

Palin's job was to help shape "the way youth in America think about teen pregnancy and parenthood," a goal of Candies, and the foundation says she has been more effective than the non-famous teen spokesperson's used by another group.

"We know that Ms. Palin's work has had a positive effect on creating awareness about teen pregnancy," Candie's spokeswoman Ali Tyrangel said in a statement.

Bristol made headlines as a teen mom in 2008 during her mother Sarah Palin's run for vice president. She demonstrates her value in this video from her Candie's campaign while on "Dancing with the Stars." Her "pause before you play" tag line is delivered with Jersey Shore's The Situation.



But some students at Washington University in St. Louis didn't want to be the ones signing Palin's paycheck.

Palin had been invited by the school's Student Health Advisory Committee to be the keynote speaker on a panel during Washington University's upcoming Sexual Responsibility Week, aka Sex Week, until "growing controversy among undergraduates over the decision to pay for her talk with student-generated funds" prompted Palin and SHAC to mutually cancel her appearance, the school said in a statement Friday. A Facebook protest was credited with halting Palin's appearance for which would have been paid between $15,000 and $30,000 of student-generated funds.

The initial debate over sex education in American schools was over whether or not the schools even had a role to play. Many parents believed that it was exclusively the parents' role to impart or withhold information about human sexuality. But by the 1970s and 80s, anxiety over growing teen pregnancy rates, and then AIDS, tilted public opinion in favor of schooling. Policies requiring sex education in the schools expanded.

Having lost the debate over whether there should be sex education in the schools, advocacy groups changed course in an attempt to tailor that instruction toward abstinence-only. The first grants for abstinence-only began, in 1981, under the provisions of The Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA). Sponsored by congressional opponents of family planning, AFLA became famous for its "fear-based" curriculum.

Since 1996, over $1 billion in federal and mandatory state funds have been allocated to promote abstinence-only sex education among young Americans (Boonstra, 2009). Specifically, these funds increased from $73 million in FY 2001 to approximately $158 million in FY 2005 (Kantor, Santelli, Teitler, & Balmer, 2008).

Abstinence-only programs are funded through three main sources: The AFLA, Title V of the Social Security Act (Title V), and the Community-Based Abstinence Education program (CBAE) (Weiser & Miller, 2010).

In 2004, US Congressman Henry Waxman (D, CA) called for an extensive evaluation of the abstinence-only education that was funded through these programs. The “Waxman Report” concluded that 80% of these programs contained false information about contraceptives, risks of sexual activity, and abortion; blurred the boundaries of religion and science; and contained a number of general science errors (Weiser & Miller, 2010).

Another study in 2007, which was mandated by Congress and conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, examined over nine years of data regarding the effectiveness of abstinence-only education and concluded that none of the programs it examined were shown effective. That same year, Congress rejected the Bush Administration’s request to expand the funding for CBAE by $28 million. The era of big increases for abstinence education was over.

Evidence mounted that abstinence-only programs were ineffective in stopping or even delaying sex. In some cases, perhaps even dangerous. A 2009 study in the journal Pediatrics found that teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex, but less likely to use contraception or to be tested for sexually transmitted infections (STI). In the wake of such results, the number of states that declined federal dollars grew. As of 2009, 23 states and the District of Columbia had opted out.

During his presidency Barak Obama has shifted policy in favor of comprehensive sex education. This program supports evidence-based models of sex education that provides medically accurate information including accurate information about birth control and disease prevention - and it cuts out abstinence-only funding.

Researcher Douglas Kirby (from the nonpartisan group National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy) examined 48 comprehensive-sex education curricula, in 2008, and found that approximately two-thirds had resulted in decreased frequency of sexual intercourse, increased use of contraceptives, or decrease in the number of sexual partners reported (Boonstra, 2009).

Obama proposed nearly $178 FY million for comprehensive sexual education in 2010 (Weiser & Miller, 2010) - which one assumes is being axed in the current budget impasse.

The Kentucky Department has remained "neutral" on the issue as Title V funds are channeled through the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Health and Family Services spokeswoman Beth Crace Fisher told KSN&C that "Kentucky receives $839,352 for Title V Abstinence State Abstinence Education grant each year for five years. This grant requires a match of 43 percent of the project’s total dollars. Matching funds will be in-kind support and local dollars. No matching funds are from Kentucky’s general funds."

But the Cabinet has a very different take on the abstinence-only research.

Fisher says, "The money is being used to implement either the Choosing the Best™ (CTB) curriculum or Postponing Sexual Involvement (PSI) curriculum for fifth through eighth graders in participating counties. These evidence-based curricula have demonstrated success in reducing teen pregnancy rates, sexually transmitted infections and HIV. The Department for Public Health awarded grants to 29 local health departments representing 56 counties."

See:
Weiser, D. & Miller, M. (2010). Barack Obama vs Bristol Palin: Why the President’s sex education policy wins. Contemporary Justice Review, 13

Boonstra, H.D. (2009). Advocates call for a new approach after the era of ‘abstinence-only’ sex education. Guttmacher Policy Review, 12 (1), 6-11.

Kantor, L.M, Santellli, J.S., Teitler, J., & Balmer, R. (2008). Abstinence-only policies and programs: An overview. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 5 (3), 6-17.

Abstinence? Sure. Until something better comes along.

This from MSNBC, Photo by Mike Kemp/Getty Images:

Abstinence?

From what?

For how long?

Teens and adults have murky, conflicting definitions when it comes to not having sex.

If you already worry about the way your teenager can swing wildly from one viewpoint to another, you probably don't want to hear this. “Kids can believe in abstinence, but also intend to have sex,” said N. Tatiana Masters, a social scientist at the University of Washington and author of a new study on teens' contradictory attitudes about abstinence and sex.

The research, published in the current issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, shows that adolescents and teens often hold seemingly irreconcilable ideas about having sex, confounding the abstinence-only sex education message supported by over a billion dollars of federal funding. The finding adds to a growing body of evidence eroding confidence in abstinence-only sex education.

Roughly $1.5 billion in federal grants to state education authorities have been distributed to finance abstinence-only curricula since the Clinton administration. But some states, like California, Wisconsin and Ohio, have stopped accepting the grants because the money is tied to a mandated abstinence-only message that studies have shown to be largely ineffective...

A truce in the sex ed wars?

Right now, both sides of the

sex education debate
still insist that education

can change sexual activity.

As best as we can tell,

they're both wrong.

New York - Hey, check it out: Abstinence education doesn't work!

It's fun to be right, that's for sure. So my fellow liberals have been gloating since last April, when an exhaustive five-year study showed what we always suspected: Kids receiving "abstinence education" are no more likely to delay sexual intercourse than their peers.

Politicians are starting to notice, too. Although the federal government continues to finance abstinence education, 11 state health departments rejected it this year. Even more, three states are considering laws that would ban any sex education program that isn't supported by "science" or "research."

But here's what most liberals won't admit: We don't have solid evidence for our own favored forms of sex education, either. So if the law requires science-based sex ed, we might have to change our entire approach...

This from the Christian Science Monitor.

Sex Ed landscape shifting in states

While eighth-graders in North Clackamus, Ore., are learning the correct way to put on condoms, some of their counterparts in New Hanover, N.C., are using books that say, “There is not a lot of proof that condoms really work. Would you trust your life to one?”

State and district officials are dealing with a variation of that question. With the April release of a congressionally authorized study showing that kids who took abstinence-only classes were just as likely to have premarital sex as those who weren’t in the classes, states are asking: Should we entrust our students to abstinence-only programs?

For a rising number of states, the answer is no. While a majority still requires that abstinence be stressed in sex education, lately there has been a movement toward comprehensive education that teaches about contraception along with abstinence. This shift has been bolstered by Democratic gains in statehouses and Congress.

The debate over sex education has been long-running and passionate. Those who favor abstinence-only classes say comprehensive programs send mixed messages to teenagers. But advocates of comprehensive courses say abstinence-only programs don’t give teens the facts they need to make informed choices.

So far this year three states – Colorado, Iowa and Washington – have enacted laws requiring schools that teach sex education to ensure the information is “medically accurate” or “science-based” – code words for a comprehensive program.

In Minnesota, an education budget bill with a similar requirement is on the governor’s desk. The Kansas Board of Education in April issued new guidelines that favor comprehensive sex education, and a bill pending in New York would fund such programs.

Those are significant victories for comprehensive sex-education advocates, considering that, before this year, only one state, Maine, had enacted a similar law since 2000. Currently, there are six states with a strong definition of “medical accuracy” written into their sex-education laws, according to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), which opposes abstinence-only programs. The states are California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Missouri and Washington.

This from Stateline.org.

Abstinence-Only Programs Don’t Work, Study Finds

Students who participated in sexual-abstinence education programs partially funded by the federal government were just as likely to have sex, and had the same number of sexual partners, as those who did not take part in the programs, a federally mandated report said today.

Both groups of youths—those who participated in abstinence education, and those who participated in other health education programs available in their areas—had a median age of first intercourse of 14 years and 9 months.

However, those students who participated in the abstinence programs were just as likely to use contraception as those who did not. Some critics of abstinence education programs have argued that they reduce rates of contraception usage.

~
The enactment of Title V, Section 510 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 significantly increased the funding and prominence of abstinence education as an approach to promote sexual abstinence and healthy teen behavior. Since fiscal year 1998, the program has allocated $50 million annually in federal funding for programs that teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for school-age children. The matching block grant program, resulted in a total of $87.5 million annually for abstinence education programs.

In the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Congress authorized a scientific evaluation of the
Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Program.

The report presents final results from a multi-year, experimentally-based impact study focused on four selected abstinence education programs: (1) My Choice, My Future! in Powhatan, Virginia; (2) ReCapturing the Vision in Miami, Florida; (3) Families United to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (FUPTP) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and (4) Teens in Control in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Based on follow-up data collected from youth four to six years after study enrollment, the report presents the estimated program impacts on youth behavior, including sexual abstinence, risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and other related outcomes.

Findings indicate that youth in the program group were no more likely than control group youth to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age. Contrary to concerns raised by some critics of the Title V, Section 510 abstinence funding, however, program group youth were no more likely to have engaged in unprotected sex than control group youth.