Patrick seeks to forgo grant, end classes on sex abstinence
But leaders in House back funding
Governor Deval Patrick wants to end state-sponsored , abstinence-only sex education in Massachusetts, a year after Governor Mitt Romney ordered the Department of Public Health to redirect a long-standing federal abstinence grant to classes that focus exclusively on encouraging teenagers to avoid sexual encounters.
Patrick proposed forgoing the $700,000 grant, which the state has received since 1998, joining at least six other states in rebelling against increasingly restrictive federal mandates about how the money can be used.
The Patrick administration points to the federal government's study of abstinence-education programs, released this month, which found that students in programs focusing solely on abstinence are just as likely to have sex as those not in such programs. At the same time, health officials say, the programs' emphasis on the failure rate of condoms and other birth control, without providing instruction about their benefits, may confuse young people and discourage them from using protection.
"We don't believe that the science of public health is pointing in the direction of very specific and narrowly defined behavioral approaches like the one that is mandated by this funding," said John Auerbach, the state commissioner of public health.
Patrick's policy change, proposed in his budget, has met resistance in the House, where Democratic leaders restored the funding in the budget plan that came to the floor yesterday at the start of a week-long debate.
They included a provision, as they did last year, requiring schools offering the abstinence program to also provide comprehensive sex education classes. Under federal rules, comprehensive sex education must be taught separately because abstinence grant money cannot support programs that also promote the use of birth control.
Defending the change, Jim Eisenberg, a spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee, said, "It enunciates a policy, and the policy is that federal funds for school-based abstinence education should be accessed, so long as abstinence is always taught as part of a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum."
But even if the House prevails, a spokesman for the Department of Public Health said the state will not apply for the money.
The grant program that funds abstinence education was created by Congress in 1996 as part of welfare law changes, with the aim of discouraging teenagers from having sex outside marriage. Most states took the money and at first were allowed wide flexibility in how they used the funds. Until 2003, Massachusetts used the money for public service announcements encouraging teenagers to wait for marriage before having sex. The state then began spending the money on supplementary educational materials promoting abstinence.
In late 2005, Romney -- then a potential presidential candidate who was trying to establish credentials as a social conservative -- announced that he would channel the money directly into expanding abstinence education programs in schools. During the remainder of his administration, Massachusetts funneled more than $800,000 to Healthy Futures, a group that had been running abstinence education programs in more than three dozen middle schools.
The state's new focus on abstinence-only education coincided with increasingly strict rules from the federal government, which dictated that programs receiving the money must deliver a detailed, eight-point message. That includes teaching that sexual activity outside marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects and that it is important to be financially self-sufficient before engaging in sexual activity.
States began to stop reapplying for the money on the grounds that the restrictions were too much. According to the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, the states of New Jersey, Wisconsin, Ohio, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Montana have decided not to reapply for the funds this year, and a dozen more are considering dropping out. California and Maine had previously decided not to participate in the program.
Rebecca Ray, director of Healthy Futures, said the funding from the state has helped the program to expand from 5,000 students to more than 11,000, mostly within the schools it already served.
Healthy Futures is a subsidiary of a Christian, anti abortion group called A Woman's Concern, but Ray said the curriculum is not religious and does not tell students what to think about abortion.
Rather, she said, the focus is on helping students make the choice to wait to have sex until they are in a healthy, lifelong relationship. She said the only information the program disseminates about condoms and other birth control is to explain that they are not 100 percent effective in preventing sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.
"In a typical program, abstinence is mostly dismissed as unrealistic," she said. ". . . We don't come in with the assumption that teens are going to be sexually active. We tell them abstinence is a realistic option, something they can choose if they want it, and we give them the tools to make and sustain that choice."
The Patrick administration and other opponents of abstinence-only education argue that abstinence education should be part of a comprehensive sex education class and that the strict limitations on the federal funding mean the Healthy Futures classes are not integrated with a regular sex education program.
"These programs are prohibited by federal regulation from discussing the prevention benefits of birth control, other than to emphasize the failure rate," said Angus McQuilken, vice president for public relations and governmental affairs for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. "That is a dangerously unrealistic and irresponsible approach."
Last year, the House stripped authorization for the grant out of the budget, but the Senate objected; a compromise was reached in a conference committee that included the caveat requiring the provision that the abstinence programs could only be taught if accompanied by a separate comprehensive sex education class. This year, after the governor stripped out the authorization, the House put it back in with the same condition.
Last year and this year, Raymond B. Ruddy -- president of the Gerard Health Foundation, which has given millions to antiabortion and abstinence groups -- hired lobbyist John Bartley to persuade lawmakers to include the funding in the budget for the program. Ruddy paid Bartley nearly $50,000 last year for his work on this single issue.
The battle over the abstinence grants could resurface this week during the House debate of its $26.7 million budget. Representative Ruth Balser, a Democrat from Newton, put in an amendment that would eliminate the grant and have the health department study the efficacy of abstinence education. Public Health Department budget amendments are expected to be taken up today.
The House began the budget debate by rejecting several Republican ideas about tax changes, including proposals to raise revenue through a tax amnesty program and to waive the 21-cent-per-gallon gas tax for municipalities. The House rejected a plan to lift the 5 percent sales tax on purchases of Energy Star light bulbs.
Material from State House News Service was included in this report. 