Research found that around 88% of the students had broken their pledge of abstinence before marriage. These teenagers will not have been properly educated and these states where there is not mandated sex education or only abstinence-based education will have the he highest teen pregnancy and birth rates among those who do mandate it. Teenagers who break their vow of abstinence are less likely to use contraceptives than those who are taught beyond abstinence. Also, those who pledge abstinence and then break their pledge are not likely to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. It is said that the “rate of STI’s is high among young people in the US. Young people ages 15-24 contract almost half the nation’s 19 million new STI’s every year; and the CDC estimates that one in four young women ages 15-19 has an STI” (CDC 2008). So the fact is that the knowledge beyond abstinence can have a substantial effect on this because students that had a comprehensive sex education showed a “40% percent delayed sexual initiation, reduced the number of sexual partners, or increased condom or contraceptive use and 60% reduced unprotected sex” (Kirby 2007). Therefore, the risk of contracting something is much higher versus ones who are given more extensive lessons on sex education and that tend to utilize contraceptives …show more content…
There are young people who are put at more risks for certain infections, but abstinence based programs will not inform their students of this. “These youth include the sexually experienced, sexually abused youth, homeless and runaway youth, and gay and lesbian young people” (Collins, Aligiri, & Summers, 2002 p. 11). Many of the times these programs won 't touch on anything other than a traditional type marriage and anything outside of this “will not be well served by programming which claims that sexual experiences should occur exclusively in the context of traditional marriage or which shames other kinds of sexual experiences” (Collins, Aligiri, & Summers, 2002 p. 11). For example, because of the rising epidemic of HIV/AIDS, young men in same-sex relationships are at more of a risk for contracting this disease and should rightfully be given the necessary information against the consequences of unprotected sex and given proper advice about what tools are there at their