Condoms protect more than ignorance

By The Daily Editorial Board (University of Washington)
April 04, 2005

Perhaps the Bush administration has forgotten what it's like to be a teenager.

The administration's idea of a good parental-child sex chat is outlined on government Web site 4parents.gov.

This site advises parents to emphasize abstinence as the only way for students to completely protect themselves, and also features a questionable chart listing common STDs and the effectiveness of condoms.

The findings are based on unpublished data presented at the 2002 National STD conference -- hardly enough to back a government site.

This site, combined with the fact that Washington schools are not required to teach medically accurate information, illuminates the government's intentional sloppiness designed to promote conservative ideology without regards to reality.

Abstinence is a respectable position, but not every young adult is going to live by such rules, and especially not in college, when the possibility of being caught by mom and dad is eliminated. Despite the government's best efforts at teaching abstinence, more than a million young women under age 20 become pregnant each year.

Here in Washington, House Bill 1282 is a step in the right direction. The bill requires schools to teach abstinence along with other preventative methods to "ensure that young people have as much accurate, objective information about sexual health as possible."

Young people deserve to know all the options available to them. The Bush-approved Web site attacks condom use as ineffective, but the protection condoms offer is far better than ignorance.