Texas Forcing "Abstinence Only" Schoolbooks Throughout Country

Want to avoid getting a sexually transmitted disease? Here’s some advice from Holt Lifetime Health, a health-education textbook that just entered the market: “The most effective way to protect yourself from STDs is to remain abstinent until marriage.”
Holt is not alone in delivering a “Just say no” message to sex-obsessed teenagers. Starting in September 2005, Capital Region health-education teachers who purchase new textbooks will have their choice of three nationally distributed textbooks. All three adhere to the so-called “abstinence-only” curriculum, which advises students to abstain from sex until marriage and avoids any mention of contraception or safer-sex options.
New York state has never endorsed the abstinence-only approach and probably never will. Study after study has judged abstinence-only an educational disaster, leading to increased rates of unprotected sex, which generally boosts teen pregnancy and STD infection rates [“Ab staining From the Truth,” Newsfront, Dec. 9, 2004]. Critics of abstinence-only methods say a better model is the so-called “abstinence first” approach, which advises students to remain abstinent but also teaches them about contraception and family planning.
Yet abstinence-only is about to become the nation-al standard for health- education textbooks. How did this happen? Who decided, based on what instructional and scientific criteria?
For answers, we must travel 1,850 miles to the Austin headquarters of the Texas State Board of Education. Each fall, the Texas Board of Education considers a new crop of textbooks for adoption. The 15 elected members of this powerful group can vote to approve a textbook as “conforming” to Texas state law, which means the state will pay for local school districts to use the textbook, or to reject it, which effectively shuts the textbook out of the $400 million Texas market.