Can you imagine anything scarier than entering adolescence with no information about sex? As policy makers and researchers study and debate the efficacy of ABC-approaches, young people lose their virginity every day.
It is a battle over the information that reaches youth. Studies show that young people get information from their peers, radio, religious leaders, and parents, and trust it in about that order.
But the meaning of abstinence seems to vary depending on policy. It basically means wait until marriage, but what good does that do for child brides, or women in polygamous relationships? How can all women be expected to “negotiate” condom use if in many parts of the world girls don’t attend school and their mother’s can’t inherit property?
If you look up the actual meaning of abstain it means ‘to refrain often’. Does abstinence mean you can kiss and fool around without penetration? Is that message out there? Bottom line: efficacy of condoms has been researched 100 more times more than abstinence-only education. No one argues that delaying sexual debut isn’t a good thing.
But honestly, it makes me bit sick to discuss this in the luxury of my western country. The clock is ticking, and adolescence is more dangerous than ever. Young people have a human right to information, and health, and those are in the 1949 Declaration of Human Rights. Need I really say more?
