UK study: Teen pregnancy rate declined after sex education spending cuts

According to the results from a new UK study, efforts to lower teen pregnancy may be better spent on encouraging less alcohol consumption and on working toward better education outcomes — instead of on comprehensive sex education.

The abstract for the study, published in the Journal of Health Economics, notes that spending cuts were made in recent years to England’s taxpayer-funded sex education/contraception programs, and these cuts were predicted to increase rates of teen pregnancy. However, the opposite occurred:

Contrary to predictions made at the time of the cuts, panel data estimates provide no evidence that areas which reduced expenditure the most have experienced relative increases in teenage pregnancy rates. Rather, expenditure cuts are associated with small reductions in teen pregnancy rates, a result which is robust to a number of alternative specifications and tests for causality.

LifeSiteNews notes, “With the government cuts in sex-ed funding, teen pregnancies in England have fallen to their lowest level since 1969, according to the new study. In fact, the statistics show teen pregnancy rates diminished the most in those areas where secular sex-ed budgets were most aggressively cut.” Along with this, “Britain’s Office for National Statistics reports that teenage girls’ birth rates have fallen by 8.7 percent in the past year alone.”

Scott Phelps of the Abstinence and Marriage Education Partnership told LifeSiteNews that he has seen the same in the United States with regard to sex education programs that push contraception. “These programs actually increase teens’ risk of non marital pregnancy,” he said. “Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest received a $4 million grant from the Obama administration for sex education. According to a report released by the Obama administration itself, females in the program reported becoming pregnant at a higher rate than females receiving the alternative program.”

Planned Parenthood says it is the nation’s largest provider of sex education in U.S. schools. But as Live Action News’ Cassy Fiano reminds readers, Planned Parenthood’s kind of sex education is dangerous:

… [I]t was found that Planned Parenthood promotes dangerous and abusive sexual practices to teenagers, like playing with feces, drinking urine, and experimenting with bestiality. Counselors frequently promoted BDSM, encouraged minor girls to break the law by visiting sex shops, and told them to watch porn to get ideas. Teenagers were also advised to experiment with whipping, choking, and asphyxiation, urged to try “toys” like horse whips, ropes, and clamps, and advised that sexual practices that leave welts and burns are acceptable.

When Planned Parenthood complains that rerouting its half a billion dollars in federal funding to Federally Qualified Health Centers would somehow mean less healthcare for women (an untrue claim), we must remember that the abortion corporation’s own most recent annual report shows an increase in federal funding along with a decline in cancer screenings for women, a decline in contraceptive services, and a decline in prenatal care and adoption services. However, abortions continue to increase by the thousands, despite the organization’s claim that it helps to prevent unplanned pregnancies.

The UK study examined “statistics from 149 municipalities between 2009 and 2014,” according to LifeSiteNews, “and found that after sex-ed budgets were cut, teen pregnancy rates fell by 42.6 percent.”

Researchers also noted that certain “underlying socio-economic factors” and risky behaviors like alcohol consumption were “significant predictors of teen pregnancy.” Abstinence proponents would argue that giving teens a false sense of security through certain types of contraceptive-promoting sex education can also lead to risky behavior, and that sexual risk avoidance/abstinence education is the best option for teens, for avoiding pregnancy as well as STIs. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirm this, writing that the best way to avoid things like sexually transmitted infections is to abstain from sex entirely or “to be in a long-term, mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected partner.”

Clearly, promoting the idea of sex to teens doesn’t lead to fewer teens having sex. As LifeSiteNews stated of the UK study, “Birth control will reduce the risk of pregnancy for sex acts which would have occurred anyway but may increase the risk among teenagers who are induced by easier access to birth control either to start having sex or to have sex more frequently.”

The way we educate our teens about sex needs to change.