Donklephant » Blog Archive » Republican Platform - Despite Program Failures, Increase Funding for Abstinence Education

Republican Platform - Despite Program Failures, Increase Funding for Abstinence Education

By Tom Hanson | Related entries in News

With the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Presidential candidate John McCain went out of his way to continue the ongoing Republican alignment with conservative Christians. As media outlets have noted, the Alaskan Governor has been a strong proponent of both creationism and abstinence education for public school students.

Ironically, directly after McCain’s selection of Palin, the Republican Party formally released its platform for 2008. Among the educational planks in the party platform, a document stressing support for programs that had a demonstrated track record of success, was a commitment to pursue increased funding for abstinence education.

The contradiction was stark. Given that support for abstinence education has been dissipating amidst ongoing data that the program does not work, the call for increased funding certainly was not consistent with the general platform message of greater support for programs that work.

Like McCain’s choice of Palin, the call for increased funding for abstinence education appeared to be yet another blatant attempt to gain political support from Christian conservatives.

2 Responses to “Republican Platform - Despite Program Failures, Increase Funding for Abstinence Education”

Agnostick Says:
September 29th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Let’s be clear about this.

The issue isn’t abstinence education, but abstinence-only education.

There is a difference.

Promoting abstinence as part of a comprehensive program, that also includes access to contraception, has been effective in other countries.

Here’s a UNESCO article about “The Dutch Model,” which places good decision-making skills above all else. The Netherlands has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world.

To be somewhat fair, Jane Chastain over at WorldNetDaily says there’s a “dirty little secret” about those numbers.

The #1 cause of abortion is the unwanted pregnancy. This is an irrefutable fact.

Decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies, and the number of abortions will go down.

Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com
me Says:
October 8th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
this is totally bogus.you neither one should get office.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

NOTE TO COMMENTERS:

You must ALWAYS fill in the two word CAPTCHA below to submit a comment. And if this is your first time commenting on Donklephant, it will be held in a moderation queue for approval. Please don't resubmit the same comment a couple times. We'll get around to moderating it soon enough.

Also, sometimes even if you've commented before, it may still get placed in a moderation queue and/or sent to the spam folder. If it's just in moderation queue, it'll be published, but it may be deleted if it lands in the spam folder. My apologies if this happens but there are some keywords that push it into the spam folder.

One last note, we will not tolerate comments that disparage people based on age, sex, handicap, race, color, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry. We reserve the right to delete these comments and ban the people who make them from ever commenting here again.

Thanks for understanding and have a pleasurable commenting experience.