If you care either way about the current state of sexual education, you shouldn’t have a hard choice between John McCain and the two remaining Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Both Obama and Clinton wracked up 100-percent pro-choice voting records with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on issues that range from sexual education programs to family-planning services. McCain, on the other hand, scored a big fat zero. But the issue that offers one of the starkest contrasts between Democrat and Republican is sex education.
 You think John McCain is moderate on sex ed issues? Think again, says Becky Reid of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia. |
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“It’s a very clear divide there, as well as on the range of issues relating to teen and women’s reproductive health,” says Becky Reid, lead grassroots organizer for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia.
According to Planned Parenthood, federal and state governments have spent $1.5 billion on abstinence-only programs. A Mathematica Policy Research study, conducted at the request of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that kids who received abstinence-only education were no more likely to have abstained from sex. They also reported having had sex with a similar number of partners, and becoming sexually active at the same age as children who had not been in the programs.
Reid calls abstinence-only programs “a billion-dollar failure.”
“Both Senators Obama and Clinton have called to stop funding those programs and redirect funding to research-based, medically accurate comprehensive sexual education programs, which include abstinence,” she says.
McCain’s record put him on the other side of the issue. He supports abstinence-only education. He also has come out in support of overturning Roe V. Wade, a position that he has reversed in recent years.
“A lot of people think John McCain is moderate on these issues,” Reid says, “and he is absolutely not.”
The Democratic candidates’ positions on sex education mirror each other. Both have sponsored prevention package legislation to reduce unintended pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted infections.
“There are no differences there to parse out,” says Reid.