‘95 percent’ premarital sex survey is connected to Planned Parenthood

‘95 percent’ premarital sex survey is connected to Planned Parenthood
Dec 22, 2006
By Erin Roach
Baptist Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--One of the most popular news stories circulating in recent days is a study by the Guttmacher Institute in New York that says 95 percent of Americans have had premarital sex. But there’s more to the story than is being reported.

“It would be more forthright for the Guttmacher Institute to mention in its reports that it is the research arm for Planned Parenthood,” Richard Ross, founder of the True Love Waits abstinence movement, told Baptist Press. “Corporate profits and staff salaries at Planned Parenthood depend on abortion services.

“Helping Americans abandon any sense that sex belongs in marriage is essential to boosting the demand for those abortion services. Knowing of the tie between Planned Parenthood and Guttmacher could help readers watch for any possible bias creeping into research,” Ross said.

Comments from the study’s author, Lawrence B. Finer, indicate his motivation may be to suggest that programs promoting abstinence until marriage are not worth American taxpayer dollars.

“This is reality-check research,” Finer said in a news release Dec. 19. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades. The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12-29-year-olds.

“It would be more effective to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active -- which nearly everyone eventually will,” Finer added.

However, Finer's assertion does not square with other studies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2003 that 47 percent of teenagers had had sex, compared to 54 percent in 1991. And the Heritage Foundation said in 2004 that young women who take a virginity pledge are at least 40 percent less likely to have a child out of wedlock and 12 times more likely to be virgins when they marry, compared to young women who do not make such a pledge.

The Bush administration has given abstinence programs hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, and Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told the Associated Press the abstinence approach is useful.

“One of its values is to help young people delay the onset of sexual activity,” Horn said. “The longer one delays, the fewer lifetime sex partners they have, and the less risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease.”

Pat Fagan, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, told USA Today the Guttmacher study is “an attack on abstinence” and its release at the end of the year is “part of a major Congressional battle about to start in January and February … to get rid of abstinence funding.”

Though it has already been released online, the study called “Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954-2003” will be published in the January/February issue of “Public Health Reports,” a journal of the U.S. Public Health Service.

Finer concluded in his study that because people are sexually active before marriage and are waiting longer to get married, young adults have an especially great need for accurate information about how to protect themselves against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, the news release noted.

But Ross, a professor of student ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, disagrees with Finer’s willingness to concede the defeat of abstinence.

“The logic that accompanies this new report seems to be this: When behavior becomes normative, it becomes morally acceptable,” Ross told BP. “I wonder if the folks at Guttmacher would apply that logic to other behaviors among the young. For example, most research indicates that almost all children and youth tell lies from time to time. Should schools and families just accept that as a fact of life and stop calling the young to truthfulness?

“Similarly, most research indicates that almost all children and youth sometimes cheat at school. Should we instruct schools to stop trying to ‘legislate morality’ by punishing cheaters?” Ross said. “Of course there is much about the human condition that is far less than perfect. The question is, Do we just accept every new level of human coarsening as normative and even moral or do we do strive to lead people toward the very best?”

Ross said that since the year True Love Waits became a national movement in 1993, teenage sexual behavior, sexually transmitted diseases, abortions and live births before marriage have declined for 12 consecutive years.

“The fact that many Americans have been immoral during that period does not negate the fact that there are many among the young who are responding beautifully to a clear, positive call to morality and purity,” he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2003 that 47 percent of teenagers had had sex, compared to 54 percent in 1991. And the Heritage Foundation said in 2004 that young women who take a virginity pledge are at least 40 percent less likely to have a child out of wedlock and 12 times more likely to be virgins when they marry, compared to young women who do not make such a pledge.

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