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Last year, President Clinton proclaimed May "National Pregnancy Prevention Month." This year, there is a little more substance behind that designation. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit initiative supported entirely by private donations, has charged itself with reducing the teen pregnancy rate by one-third by the year 2005. Founded in February 1996, the Campaign has just announced the first of many strategies to tackle the problem.

The Campaign aims to create a national consensus that unwed teen pregnancy is not acceptable. This is good news. Pregnancies among unwed teens place mother and child at high risk medically, socially, and financially. Meanwhile, the social costs of supporting unwed teen mothers continue to rise. So public attempts to restore a stigma against teen pregnancies are long overdue.

Just how the Campaign hopes to accomplish its goal, however, remains unclear. Will it focus on contraceptive education and availability, or will it acknowledge the legitimacy and success of the abstinence approach?

We’d better hope for the latter. Contraceptive education has failed to stem the tide of teen pregnancy. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, teen pregnancy rates increased an alarming 23 percent from 1972 to 1990--the period during which "comprehensive sex education" (read: contraceptive education) began and became widespread. In the meantime, we’ve created a public-health emergency. Not only are rates of teen pregnancy at a historic high, but a shocking one-third of the 20 million annual cases of sexually transmitted disease (STD) strike junior-high and high-school students, many of whom become sterile for life.

Now consider the programs that teach abstinence. In Washington, D.C., Elayne Bennett’s Best Friends program is credited with slashing rates of sexual activity among teens from 71 percent to 3.4 percent in the schools that have introduced it. In one year, teen pregnancy rates also have dropped, from 20 percent to 1.1 percent. Teen Aid, a West Coast abstinence program, cut the number of teen pregnancies in the San Marcos, California, school district from nearly 150 a year to just 20. Perhaps this explains why welfare reformers in Congress last year managed to find $50 million to fund similar initiatives.

With the widespread failure of conventional sex ed and the growing success of abstinence education, advocates are poised to smash a paralyzing misconception about teenage sex: Although most parents would like their children to delay sex until marriage, they have been convinced that teenage sexual activity is inevitable and uncontrollable. This may come as a surprise to many, but raising teenagers to be sexually abstinent is a realistic goal. All the best research shows that parents are the single most important influence on whether their teens become sexually active. By some estimates, unfortunately, just 10 to 15 percent of today’s youth have discussed sex with their parents, even though more than half of sexually active teens, according to a Roper Starch Survey, wish they could.

We are beginning to see a backlash against the notion that adolescent sex is inevitable. True, welfare directors and social scientists continue to dispute the power of an abstinence-only message. But a burgeoning cadre of school districts is embracing the abstinence approach. What follows is a look at several excellent school-based programs that can help parents persuade teens to abstain. They are all much more successful than government-funded approaches that emphasize contraception.

Parents have a duty to lobby their children’s schools to offer character-based, abstinence education. But these resources are meant to augment, not usurp, the parental role. I believe that sex education is primarily a family issue. Unlike contraceptive-based sex education, effective abstinence education depends completely upon parental involvement.

A final word of advice: Parents can do a lot to help their children avoid the tragedy of premature sexuality. The key is to behave with utter consistency. It is self-defeating to tell teenagers to abstain, and then in the next breath advise them to use condoms if they choose to become sexually active. It’s a dangerous mixed message that fuels risky behavior. "Many of my friends’ parents say they don’t want their kids to have sex," a teenage girl told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "but if they do, to use birth control. By tacking on that ‘if,’ parents are telling teens that they don’t really expect them to abstain."

Best Friends

Based in Washington, D.C., this program promotes abstinence in inner-city school districts by fostering self-respect and sound decisionmaking. Lack of self-respect often contributes to promiscuity and pregnancy. Without self-respect, according to the program’s philosophy, it’s hard to say no to anyone or anything. Best Friends is based on the concept that the best kind of friend is one who encourages you to make better decisions about your life. The components of the program include:

Group discussions. Girls meet with adult leaders every three weeks to discuss ways to develop a healthy, sexually abstinent lifestyle (as well as one that excludes drugs and alcohol). In addition to self-respect and decisionmaking, the discussions cover love and dating, friendship, physical fitness, nutrition, AIDS, and STDs. The leaders augment these sessions with videos and reading assignments.

Role-model presentations. Women from the community serve as role models for Best Friends girls, explaining how they have made important decisions in their own lives.

Mentor meetings. For at least 45 minutes a week, each girl meets with a teacher, administrator, or other school faculty member serving as her mentor.

Fitness and dance classes encourage the girls to value their overall health. Cultural events and service projects prompt them to explore their communities and set their sights on the wider world around them.

An evaluation released in early 1996 showed a decrease in both sexual activity and pregnancy rates. By the 10th grade, 71 percent of girls in D.C who did not go through the Best Friends program were sexually active--compared to just 3.4 percent of Best Friends girls. The pregnancy rate for girls in the program was 1.1 percent compared to 20 percent for girls who did not participate.

"This organization’s goals are to produce classy, intelligent, respectful, and productive young women," wrote one eighth-grader from Jefferson Junior High. "All girls should go through a program like this, because Best Friends is all about making positive things happen."

Contact: Best Friends Foundation, 2000 N St. N.W., Suite 201, Washington, D.C. 20036. Tel.: 202-822-9266.

Project Reality

This Chicago-based model offers two programs that promote abstinence for junior-high and high-school students, "Choosing the Best" and "Facing Reality." Choosing the Best is a values-based curriculum that gives teens the information and training they need to discover for themselves that abstinence until marriage is the wisest choice. It accomplishes this through eight lessons designed to:

* Communicate the truth about the physical and emotional consequences of sexual activity;

* Build self-esteem so that teens value themselves and their power to make decisions;

* Teach them to resist pressure;

* Encourage open communication with parents.

Facing Reality teaches more than sexual abstinence; it also promotes abstinence from alcohol and drugs. Research reveals that students who are involved in one of these risky behaviors are generally involved in at least one of the others, so addressing all these behaviors together is key.

The program includes five lessons on human sexuality, five lessons on substance abuse and how it affects decisions to be sexually active, and five lessons on cultural influences that prompt a teen to be sexually active. The latter subjects demonstrate how movies and television portray sexual activity as desirable and free of consequence, how peers can push teens into activities they really don’t want to do, and how teens can resist such peer pressure. Parents receive copies of the teacher’s guide.

Both programs have been proven effective in changing teenagers’ attitudes towards sex. Psychology researchers from Northwestern University’s School of Medicine surveyed more than 1,500 students with an average age of 16 before and after they took part in Facing Reality during the 1993-94 school year. After the program, significantly more students said they believed that sexual urges are controllable, that there are benefits to waiting until marriage to have sex, and that even teens who have already been sexually active can benefit from a decision to stop having sex until marriage.

Northwestern’s evaluation of Choosing the Best also found that students changed their attitudes toward abstinence. At-risk students showed the most significant improvement. The evaluation showed that 74 percent of all participants said the program convinced them to say no to sex before marriage; and that 60 percent of kids who were already sexually active before the program were, after the program, willing to say no to sex before marriage.

Contact: Project Reality, P.O. Box 97, Golf, Ill. 60029. Tel.: 847-729-3298.

Teen-Aid, Inc.

Teen-Aid, Inc., based in Spokane, Washington, offers several abstinence curricula for students in grades 5 through 12. "Me, My World, My Future" helps junior-high students understand the consequences of sexual activity. Lessons entitled "Right to Say No" and "Right to Be Free" advocate abstinence in an innovative and highly motivating manner.

The high-school course, "Sexuality, Commitment, and Family," is a values-based program that places human sexuality in the context of commitment, marriage, and family. Students come to understand sexuality as a vital part of identity and feelings of self-worth. They also gain an appreciation of the many benefits of remaining sexually abstinent. At the same time they become fully aware of the many risks of sexual activity.

Both programs emphasize and encourage parental involvement through informational literature for parents, called Parent Grams and Parent/Teen Communicators, that describe the day’s lesson and suggest topics for parent-teen discussions.

In the school year before a junior-high school in San Marcos, California, introduced the curriculum, 147 girls became pregnant. Two years after the program was first adopted, the number plummeted to 20. An evaluation of students who completed the program in California, Idaho, Oregon, Mississippi, and Washington reports profound changes in attitudes about teexage sex.

Among the findings: Students were more likely to agree that abstinence was the best way to avoid pregnancy and STDs. They also affirmed that premarital sex was against their values and standards and it was important for them to avoid it. Participating students were more likely to reject the permissive notion that sex is OK if their partner wants it, if they are in love, or if they just use birth control.

Higher-risk students (those who had already engaged in sexual activity) responded well to the program. In fact, evaluations of the program in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho public schools found that although all student groups benefited, nonvirgins benefited the most. This belies the theory that teens, once they become sexually active, always remain so. Indeed, the researchers concluded that being able to influence nonvirgins is immensely valuable from a social policy perspective, because this group is most at risk from all the ill effects of sexual activity.

The Moon Area School District in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, for example, uses the Teen-Aid curriculum. Says school-district administrator Paul Gallagher, "We have selected the instructional materials of Teen-Aid to teach abstinence-based human sexuality to our students. We feel it is our job to support the family as the primary educator and have developed a partnership with the family to teach one message--abstinence--to our students on human sexuality. Teen-Aid helps us do that."

Contact: Teen-Aid, 723 E. Jackson St., Spokane, Wash. 99207. Tel.: 509-482-2868.

FACTS Project

FACTS Project (Family Accountability Communicating Teen Sexuality) offers separate age-appropriate curricula consisting of 30 to 40 lessons on friendship, sex and sexuality, values, risk-taking behavior, managing peer pressure, setting standards, respect, deferred gratification, setting goals, decisionmaking, and the advantages of choosing abstinence. For example, a session on "refusal skill techniques" teaches teens how to say no with body language and dress as well as with words. Concrete examples and role playing help teens apply skills. The program encourages parental involvement by providing a parents’ guide. One parent wrote in an evaluation of the program that "FACTS draws kids and parents closer."

Many students, teachers, and medical professionals like William Toffler, a doctor and associate professor at Oregon Health Science University, attest that the FACTS Project is highly effective at fostering abstinence.

Contact: Northwest Family Services, 4805 N.E. Glisan St., Portland, Ore. 92713. Tel.: 503-215-6377.

RSVP

The Responsible Social Values Program (RSVP) "provides the students with irrefutable evidence that abstinence is the best possible choice for their future," writes Wayne Farinacci, the associate principal for curriculum at a suburban Cleveland high school, in his evaluation of the program. "This evidence is presented in a logical, factual manner without chastisement or feelings of guilt. RSVP gives our students a message counter to that of popular culture."

Utilizing three separate age-appropriate curricula for students in grades six through eight, RSVP encourages teens to practice abstinence until marriage. The program emphasizes that saying no to sex outside of marriage means saying yes to a healthier, happier life and a future with greater opportunity. Dynamic classroom activities teach students ways to say no to sex and shows them the advantages of saving sex for marriage. RSVP also conveys lessons about the importance of family relationships, respect for others, and self-control.

Other exercises expose the high-risk nature of sex outside of marriage. In one activity, several students are invited to reach into a paper sack of wrapped hard candies and then eat the candy they retrieve. After chewing on the candy for a few minutes, they then throw it back in the bag. Other students are then invited to choose a piece of candy in the bag--an offer that they all refuse with comments such as "gross" and "I don’t want something used with all those germs on it." Students soon realize that engaging in premarital sex means transforming themselves into a "leftover" and that they are exposing themselves to great physical danger.

A comprehensive evaluation of RSVP in August 1995 concluded that the program succeeds in influencing teens both to regard abstinence as the best choice and to begin to consider the involvement of their parents in this important topic as helpful instead of harmful.

Contact: RSVP, 2222 Issaquah St., Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio 44221-3704. Tel.: 330-940-4240.

Kristine Napier has been involved in abstinence education in Cleveland Ohio, for more than six years. She is the author of The Power of Abstinence (Avon Books).