Media Use Premarital Sex Study to Attack Abstinence Funding

After years of cinematic casual sex and Planned Parenthood-style sex “education,” it's no surprise that most Americans apparently have sex before marriage—but doesn't that fact argue that America should expand federal programs that promote abstinence? 

Not to our friends in the media.  They're using a study confirming the obvious—America long ago opened the sexual Pandora's Box—to challenge funding of federal programs that teach schoolchildren to abstain from sex.

The study, released December 17 by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a sexual issues think tank associated with abortion provider Planned Parenthood, claims that “more than nine out of ten Americans” have had premarital sex, even those born in the 1940s.   Associated Press quotes the study's author, Lawrence Finer: “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

Normal, perhaps.  But is it desirable and wise? 

USA Today quotes Heritage Foundation fellow Pat Fagan, who unmasked the political agenda behind the study:  “[it is] part of a major congressional battle about to start in get rid of abstinence funding.”

AP and UPI alike give Finer a platform to plead the Guttmacher Institute's anti-abstinence line: “The data clearly show the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government's funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12-29-year-olds.”

Absent from the articles are the stark realities of sex outside wedlock: broken homes, abortions, and millions of new annual cases of incurable sexually transmitted diseases. Given the colossal evidence of harm, one would think that the media might focus on ways to reverse the trend, not serve up articles that serve as propaganda for the anti-abstinence industry. If a similar study were released that showed a vast majority of Americans were smoking tobacco, would the media tout “findings” by companies that want to get rid of anti-smoking programs? 

At least AP identifies the Guttmacher Institute as “a think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings.”