via Slog

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

And um, doesn't help when the legislature mandates ONLY abstinence training, no birth control info.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

Incidentally, as I was making that picture, I heard *Think* on the radio and the topic today is teenage pregnancy. Apparently, Texas has the highest rate of teenager pregnancies in the US.(Link from DMN in January 2008)  (The podcast isn't up yet but it will be at this link.)

Time to ditch the MANDATORY Abstinence only training for high school students. (Her'es what I wrote before a year or two ago about the program that came to Glen Rose.)