Sex education was first introduced in the early 1900s as social hygiene education and expanded over the next several decades in an effort to reduce sexually transmitted infections, also referred to as STIs. (ProQuest Staff, “Topic Overview: Sex Education”). In the late 1900s, the Adolescent Family Life of 1981 introduced abstinence-only programs. Since then, there has been a debate over the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs, and whether or not they are better than traditional sex education courses. People who are in favor of abstinence education claim that sexual intercourse before marriage is wrong, abstinence is the only “safe sex”, and that providing information about contraceptives, or “a device, drug, or chemical agent that prevents …show more content…
In addition to teaching about the health benefits, abstinence programs help teens develop character traits that prepare then for “future-oriented goals”. Abstinence programs can have many benefits such as reducing early sexual activity among teenagers and therefore decreasing their exposure to unwanted pregnancies, STIs, and psycho-emotional harm (Kim). Various studies have shown that abstinent teens have reported better psychological well-being than those who regularly engage in sexual activities and a study published by the American Medical Association found that, “two years after attending an eight-hour abstinence program, about one-third of the participants had initiated in sexual activity compared to nearly one-half of the non participants” (Kim). They also studied alternative programs that taught contraception, or the “safe sex” approach, instead of abstinence, and found that these programs did not reduce sexual activity in teens and failed to increase the use of contraception. These studies show that teaching abstinence has benefits is possibly more advantageous than teaching comprehensive sex education. However, while some believe that abstinence is best option, many others believe that regular comprehensive sex education is