Sex ed doesn't work, but abstinence is worse: researcher

Last Updated: Friday, June 14, 2002 | 11:38 PM ET

CBC News

Sex education doesn't work, a team of McMaster University researchers has found.

And neither do the other methods of preventing teen pregnancies, a study headed by Alba DiCenso, a professor Faculty of Health Sciences, shows.

She called for new pregnancy-prevention programs that delay intercourse and improve birth-control use, thereby reducing teenage pregnancy rates.

Alba DiCenso

The researchers reviewed other published studys, and concluded "the prevention strategies evaluated in these studies – sex education, abstinence programs, family planning clinics, and community based programs – did not achieve their intended effect," they said in a release.

Abstinence programs, which are very popular in the Unites States since the Bush administration has backed them, are the worst, she said. The pregnancy rate of young women in abstinence studies actually went up.

On the other hand, sex ed does not lead to higher rates of pregnancy, as some have claimed, she said.

Pregnancy rates among young women aged 15 to 19 are 93 per 1,000 in the United States and 43 per 1,000 in Canada.

For the teenagers who do get pregnant, life is often hard. "I wouldn't have chosen to be a young mom," a teenage mother said.