Story last updated at 1:43 a.m. Thursday, July 29, 2004

Teens wonder if abstinence-only sex education realistic

Just Saying No

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) -- Samantha Hennen counts on her fingers as she poses a question to a couple high-school classmates: "How many girls in our class were pregnant before our junior year?" the 18-year-old senior asks.

They come up with five, out of about 75 girls.

It's an illustration, they say, of teenage life in America. At a time when sexually transmitted diseases present serious health risks to young people, President Bush has suggested doubling federal funding for "abstinence only" sex education. But many teens see that approach as unrealistic.

"No matter what adults say, some kids are going to have sex anyway," Hennen says.

Time and time again in interviews for this story, young people agreed that it's generally best for teens to wait to have sex. Some have gone as far as signing pledges to personally remain abstinent.

But a significant number also found the "only" in abstinence-only education troubling -- including Hennen and classmate Laura Gebhardt when a speaker at their Roman Catholic high school suggested that giving their significant others a "peck on the cheek" was as far as they should go.

"Let's be realistic. Maybe that's how it used to be. But things have changed," says Gebhardt, a 17-year-old senior. She's chosen abstinence for herself but, given the choices some of her peers are making, thinks it's vital that sex education include information about contraceptives.

Their opinions are shared by a majority of teens, according to a national survey released in January by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit that tracks health issues. The study was done in conjunction with Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and National Public Radio.

The survey of seventh- to 12th-graders found that while 95 percent thought it was appropriate to teach high school students to wait until they're older to have sex, not quite two-thirds agreed that abstinence was the "expected standard" for all school-age children.

Meanwhile, 94 percent of students said that teaching high school students about birth control was appropriate, and 87 percent said it was appropriate for teachers to explain how to use those contraceptives and where to get them.

Still, the issue of sex education -- and especially contraceptives -- remains a sensitive subject.

As one health teacher at a rural public school district outside St. Cloud put it, "Some adults don't even want us to talk about abstinence. They don't think you should talk about anything."

She asked that she and her school not be identified out of fear that her comments would anger more conservative members of the community -- the same ones who complained a few years back when the St. Cloud paper ran a photo showing public high school students learning how to use condoms.

Earlier this year, debate was further stirred in Minnesota when state health officials released an independent evaluation of an abstinence-only pilot program called Education Now and Babies Later (ENABL).

One of the first evaluations of any program of its kind, the survey found that sexual activity had doubled among junior high school students who took part in it.

Evaluators recommended broadening the program to include more information about contraception. But abstinence proponents questioned the study's validity and said that the program would have been more successful if it suggested teens waited until marriage to have sex, rather than just until they were older.

"Waiting until marriage," says Kim Schmitt, a 16-year-old sophomore at a public high school in St. Cloud, "I think it's a good idea." She learned about sexually transmitted diseases during a recent health class and said hearing that information helped reinforce her decision to wait for sex.

"You realize how dangerous it can be," she says.

But Hennen, the 18-year-old senior from the Catholic high school, rolls her eyes at the thought of waiting until marriage.

"I'm not going to say 'no' if I'm dating someone for a long time," she says.

To her, having sex is a personal decision, one that should be made carefully and with direct, simple information about reliable birth control. That information, she says, would be more helpful to her and her peers than being told to "just say no" -- or, as she did for one class, taking a "pretend baby" home and caring for it over a weekend to learn the responsibilities of parenthood.

"It wasn't really that hard. I even took my 'baby' to the movies with a couple of friends," Hennen says, noting that her parents' own situation did much more to make her want to avoid pregnancy early in life.

"My mom had four kids by age 25," she says. "It wasn't easy."

Gebhardt, her classmate and fellow senior, says her parents have influenced her ideas about sex, too -- but in a different way, because she knows they'd be disappointed if she were to get pregnant before she was married.

"I would feel terrible because my parents have such a high regard and respect for me," she says. "I would feel like I let them down."

Still, it's not that way for everyone.

There are many teens, says 16-year-old Heather Santone, who base their decisions about sex -- as well as alcohol and drugs -- on what their peers think. And she says some, more often boys, see sexual experiences as something to brag about.

"I've chosen abstinence, but that's just because I have high morals for myself," says the sophomore who attends an alternative public high school program in St. Cloud. "But the fact is, a lot of kids aren't waiting, even if they check a box that says they will."

She's referring to the "yes" box on virginity pledge cards that some abstinence speakers hand out to middle and high school classes.

Jessi Ritzschke, who gives presentations about abstinence in the St. Cloud area, is one who hands out those cards. And depending on the crowd she's talking to, she's well aware of the odds she's up against.

Surveys have, for instance, shown that about half of teens have sex before they leave high school.

And while the teen pregnancy rate has been steadily dropping since the early 1990s, new federal statistics say that young people, ages 15 to 24, account for half of the new cases of sexually transmitted diseases.

They are the kinds of statistics Ritzschke shares with students.

"I saw something that said, 'Ignorance isn't bliss. Ignorance is ignorance.' And I think that's really true," says Ritzschke, the 25-year-old program director for the Central Minnesota Freedom Advocates -- a privately funded group known to students as the "A Team."

The group's talks are generally just one part of a multiple-day sex ed unit at many public schools in the area -- as Ritzschke sees it, giving students the "viable option" of waiting until marriage to have sex, as she is doing.

Her group's talks to eighth- and 10th-grade health classes include discussions about self-worth, setting limits and how French kissing and "heavy petting" can lead to sex.

Some students say that hearing the message from people who are closer to their own age, including Ritzschke, helps.

But others wish their parents were more comfortable talking about sex.

Stephen Wocken, 16-year-old junior in St. Cloud, goes as far as suggesting that parents should have to attend sex education classes of their own -- in part, to learn how to loosen up.

"I think," he says, smiling at the idea, "that'd be more important than abstinence-only education."

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On the Net:

Worth the Wait: http://www.worththewait.org

Kaiser Family Foundation: http://www.kff.org

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Martha Irvine can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org