FACT:  A grant of $914,495 per year is available to New Jersey for the asking. The federal government calls for a $3 match for every $4 received and in past years when NJ had received Title V, the state required that each grantee be responsible for that match. Without this funding, NJ students are deprived of a health message that they need and parents want. Programs that have been unjustifiably de-funded have a proven impact. Teens, parents and the communities cities of Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Camden, along with other communities in Cumberland, Middlesex, Somerset and Cape May Counties are being severely impacted by this decision.

MYTH:  The new rules will not let teachers talk about contraception.

FACT:  The A-H provisions of abstinence funding do not preclude schools from teaching contraceptive information, as long as it is not provided during the same class meetings as the abstinence teaching.  Both should co-exist in any school that truly desires a balanced approach.

MYTH:  Some of the elements required are inconsistent with the educational content of New Jersey’s comprehensive sexuality education standards – specifically regarding marriage and abstinence.

FACT:  The NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards for Human Relationships and Sexuality direct teachers to teach about both marriage and abstinence (http://www.nj.gov/education/aps/cccs/chpe).

MYTH:  Teaching abstinence will detract from comprehensive sex education.

FACT:   Including an abstinence message when sex is taught is what makes it a comprehensive message.  In New Jersey, stressing abstinence in the classroom is mandated by law.  The AIDS Prevention Act of 1999 (Assembly No. 792) requires that all sex education and AIDS education programs stress abstinence in all public school sex education classes.  Programs that have been de-funded only strengthened the abstinence segments of family life curriculum. 

MYTH:  The NJ Department of Health has said that the obligation to teach that monogamy in marriage is an expected standard and that sex outside of marriage is likely to be harmful to teens “is not some-thing we wish to do.” Further, that it is “not the function of state government to create standards.” 

FACT:  The state should want to promote institutions that deliver healthy outcomes.  Social science research shows the overwhelming benefits of healthy marriage to adults, children and society.  Having a standard recognizes what is beneficial.  For instance, it is well established that the greatest determiner of poverty is single parent households. We can support single parents in one of the most difficult jobs on earth without promoting that as an optimal social construct.  Regarding teens, sexual activity and harm:  1 out of 4 sexually active teens gets a disease each year s/he is active and 19% of sexually active teens become pregnant each year (Guttmacher - Facts in Brief).

MYTH:  Abstinence programs do not give medically accurate information.

FACT:  All New Jersey Title V grantees are able and willing to provide their medical references.  Confusion arises when, prior to an abstinence educator’s visit, information regarding condom effectiveness uses vague terms like “highly effective” or statements that cannot be backed up with scientific studies in actual use like “98-99% effective.”  Disease-specific, federally-published effectiveness rates are taught by abstinence educators to assist students in carefully assessing the risk vs. benefits of teen sexual activity (Condom effectiveness rates for STD transmission at National Institutes of Health: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/dmid/stds/condomreport.pdf ).

MYTH:  Kids are going to be sexually active and nothing we can do will change that.

FACT:  More than half (54%) of high school students are not sexually active.  They need an educational message that encourages and empowers them to stay that way.  Program evaluation by Montclair State University on NJ’s Title V abstinence programs show a 36% increase (44.1% at pre test vs. 60.2% at post test, 2005-2006) in the number of students who say they “plan to be abstinent when they date (go out).”

Two reasons have been cited for the drop in adolescent births in the United States - -increased abstinence and more effective use of birth control.

If both of these methods have been the major contributors to a decrease in teen pregnancies, how would New Jersey students benefit by the removal of one of these protective elements?