Planned Parenthood is still promoting publicly funded sex-education despite the program’s past failures.
On Tuesday the nation’s leading abortion provider posted on X,
Hey state politicians sex ed in schools actually reduces the rate of unplanned pregnancies and STIs!
It’s almost as if giving young people the tools and education they need to make healthy decisions actually helps them make healthy decisions. Wild, right?
The irony is that government evaluations have shown Planned Parenthood’s publicly funded sex-education and family planning strategies simply do not work the way Planned Parenthood claims they do.
Several years ago the Obama Administration gave Planned Parenthood millions of dollars to conduct teen pregnancy prevention programs in the Pacific Northwest.
Afterwards, evaluations of Planned Parenthood’s sex-education program found students who went through it were often more likely to become pregnant or cause a pregnancy.
In other words, Planned Parenthood’s multimillion dollar sex-education program did exactly the opposite of what the federal government wanted.
In the 1980s and 1990s, public officials in Arkansas promoted Planned Parenthood-style sex-education, but the programs failed to have a meaningful impact on teen pregnancy and abortion in Arkansas.
Then in 1997 the Arkansas Legislature and Governor Mike Huckabee began promoting abstinence education in Arkansas. From 1997 to 2005, Arkansas’ teen birthrate decreased 17% — and Arkansas’ teen abortion rate plummeted a staggering 48%.
Governor Huckabee’s abstinence education model was so successful in Arkansas that it drew national recognition.
In 2016 — again, while President Barack Obama was still in office — the federal Centers for Disease Control released a 208-page report concluding teenagers who practice abstinence were healthier in nearly every way than teenagers who are sexually active.
The report looked at everything from seatbelt and bike helmet use to substance abuse, diet, exercise, and even tanning bed use.
The CDC found sexually-active teens were less healthy and engaged in riskier behavior across the board.
The report underscored that not only were abstinence education models like Arkansas’ effective at reducing teen pregnancy and abortion, but they also promoted healthier lifestyle choices across the board.
So while Planned Parenthood continues to promote public funding for its ineffective sex-education programs, Arkansas has shown there are much better ways to reduce teen pregnancy. Handing out tax dollars to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood simply is not the answer.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.