News

Feb 11, 2010

A new report from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) says comprehensive sex education should be provided to children as young as 10 years old but abstinence-based sex education as promoted by religious groups, such as the Catholic Church and Islamic schools, is ineffective and should not be utilized.

The IPPF’s analysis and recommendations have been denounced by some Catholic and pro-family organizations.

“Young people have the right to be fully informed about sexuality and to have access to contraceptives and other services,” said Bert Koenders, minister for Development Cooperation for the Netherlands government, in the foreword to the report, “Stand & Deliver: Sex, Health and Young People in the 21st Century.”

“These rights are enshrined in various internationally agreed human rights conventions and treaties, but -- unfortunately -- they are still not universally respected,” wrote Koenders.

The report says, “Culture, religion and traditions are some of the biggest obstacles in implementing sexual and reproductive health programmes for young people.”

“Fundamentalist and other religious groups -- the Catholic Church and madrasas (Islamic schools) for example -- have imposed tremendous barriers that prevent young people, particularly, from obtaining information and services related to sex and reproduction,” says the IPPF report.

“Currently, many religious teachings deny the pleasurable and positive aspects of sex and limited guidelines for sexual education often focus on abstinence before marriage (although evidence shows this strategy has been ineffective in many settings),” claims the IPPF. “The reality is, young people are sexual beings and many of them are religious as well. There is a need for pragmatism, to address life as it is and not as it might be in an ideal world.”

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, criticized the IPPF report, saying in a statement, “The goal of IPPF is to sexually engineer society, and one way to accomplish this feat is to smear religious conservatives, especially Catholics. This new report not only substantiates this charge, it makes it clear that Planned Parenthood wants to bring its irresponsible ideas to bear on kids.”

“The entire program is based on a faulty assumption,” said Donohue. “IPPF says that, ‘The taboo on youth sexuality is one of the key forces driving the AIDS epidemic and high rates of teenage pregnancy and maternal mortality.’ Nonsense. In the 1950s, there was no sex education in the schools, the pill was not commercially available and AIDS didn’t exist. Yet the out-of-wedlock birth rate was comparatively miniscule and sexually transmitted diseases were relatively rare. All because of taboos.”

Jeanne Monahan, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the conservative Family Research Council, said, “The report promotes contraceptive sex education for children as young as 10 years old. Most disturbingly, the report advocates that children as young as 10 be ‘empowered’ to ‘develop satisfying and pleasurable sexual lives.’”

“This report isn’t about doing what is right for young people and certainly not about offering them the very best options in life,” said Monahan. “It is about advancing an ideological agenda that is hostile to traditional families, religious faith and the good of the children.”

The IPPF’s criticism of certain religious groups as apparently denying “the pleasurable and positive aspects of sex” is an “intrinsically bigoted misapprehension of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition” and is “repulsive,” said Monahan.

The IPPF report emphasizes access to sexual education for young people that is “free of administrative restrictions and obstacles,” such as health care providers requiring parental or spousal consent prior to giving out contraceptives.

The report further states that governments should make sexuality teaching mandatory in and out of school.

“Make comprehensive sexuality education mandatory in school and invest in multi- sectoral sexuality education programmes to reach out-of-school youth,” reads the report.

Furthermore, the report pushes the idea that young people want access to contraceptives, something the report says should be embraced because it will slow down population growth in developing countries, a phenomenon claimed to be primarily caused by “unwanted fertility.”

“The current generation wants to have fewer children than their parents,” the report states, adding that “given the information, services and supplies they need, they will achieve these desires, and they will contribute to population growth stabilization.”

Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, said that apparent overpopulation should not be used as an excuse to disseminate contraceptives, which Spriggs said tend to cause more harm than good.

“Even in the developing world, we feel that overpopulation is not the threat that people have made it out to be,” Spriggs told CNSNews.com.

He continued, “With respect to the specifics about contraception, if you look at what’s happened in the big picture in the 50 years since the introduction of the birth control pill for example, we have not seen a reduction in out of wedlock pregnancies -- we’ve seen a vast increase.”

“So, the effect of ready availability of contraception,” said Spriggs, “is not as effective in reducing unwanted pregnancies as it is effective in communicating, ‘Hey, it’s okay for you to have sex, go and do it.’”

Inquiries by CNSNews.com to the IPPF for comment were not returned before this story was posted.