The Consequences of Abstinence Only Policy

The consequences of the conservative right-wing approach to sex education is becoming rather clear in the United States.

We aren't talking about a simple failure here, but instead of an approach whose failures are so glaring that they are costing people their lives.

In Alabama - a deeply conservative and religious state - the latest legislation regarding HIV and Aids is known as the Abstinence Bill.

But Michelle Lampkin, an awareness campaigner who is herself HIV positive, said that young people are having sex "whether you want to believe it or not."

She told Analysis she has tried advising young people to wear condoms, but is accused of "promoting teenagers to have sex."

"I'm not - what I'm doing is to help to protect them," she argued.

Meanwhile, statistics from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta show that, while Aids is still thought of by some as a disease primarily affecting the gay community and drug users, the biggest risk to women comes from heterosexual partners - husbands or boyfriends who do not know or do not tell their HIV status.

The point here is simple - AIDS is a disease. It is not a punishment from God for "immoral" behaviour - any more than Katrina was. The simple cold reality is that AIDS doesn't care about its victims gender, sexual orientation or anything else. Period.

Any education policy that provides the very information and knowledge that can protect people from the risks is better than nothing - even if it is imperfect. While abstinence is unquestionably effective, it doesn't work - not when you are talking about the mobile hormone factories that are adolescents and young adults.