Letter to an Atheist by Michael Patrick Leahy

False Statement # 12

The fact that 30 percent of our sex-education programs teach abstinence only (at a cost of more than $200 million a year) surely has something to do with this. (Page 28)

The fact that 30 percent of our sex-education programs teach abstinence only (at a cost of more than $200 million a year) surely has something to do with this. (Page 28) As he does throughout much of his book, Mr. Harris provides no documentation to support this claim. In fact, he appears to have his numbers wrong. A December 2004 Report by the US.House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform—Minority Staff special investigations division stated that “the federal government will spend approximately $170 million on abstinence only education programs in fiscal year 2005, more than twice the amount spent in fiscal year 2001.” Since the data in question that purports to demonstrate 70 times higher rates of gonorrhea among American teenagers is taken from 1996, it’s hard to see how programmatic expenditures that began five years after the study might have effected the past. The first major funding of abstinence programs at the federal level did not begin until 1996, under Section 510 of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which provided $50 million a year in funding for programs “with the exclusive purpose of promoting abstinence.” A second program, Special Programs for Regional and National Significance –Community Based Abstinence Education – did not begin until fiscal year 2001. Another small program, that may have some content that is abstinence related, promotes “prudent approaches” to adolescents, under the 1981 Adolescent Family Life Act. But that program has never received much funding, and in 2005 received only $13 million of Federal Funds.

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