As millions of teens head back to school, policymakers seeking to deter young people from having sex receive a failing grade in two areas: sex education and access to contraceptives. New analyses from the Guttmacher Institute highlight the disconnect between new federal abstinence-only education policy and teen sexual behavior, as well as the potentially harmful effects of proposed state laws requiring teens to involve their parents in their decisions to use birth control.

Additional resources:

Facts on American Teens’ Sexual and Reproductive Health

"U.S. Teenage Pregnancy Statistics: National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity"

The Bush administration recently announced that federally funded abstinence-only education programs would teach young people that, if they are unmarried, they should refrain from any behavior that could result in "sexual stimulation"—including kissing, or possibly even hand-holding. "While the administration has made clear that it expects unmarried people to abstain from activities that go well beyond "traditional" intercourse, its policy is now completely out of touch with long-standing patterns of teen sexual behavior and with at least some behaviors that many adults would consider developmentally appropriate for teenagers," according to Cynthia Dailard, author of "Legislating Against Arousal: The Growing Divide Between Federal Policy and Teenage Sexual Behavior." Dailard also notes that efforts to prevent teens—let alone all unmarried people—from doing anything that might result in sexual stimulation are unrealistic at best and at worst may have harmful public health consequences by failing to prepare young people for the time they—almost inevitably—become sexually active.

Indeed, the facts are clear:

• The typical American teen has sex for the first time at around age 17—almost a decade before they marry; 70% have had sex by age 19.
• While the teen pregnancy rate has declined by more than one-third since peaking in 1990, almost 750,000 women aged 15–19 become pregnant each year; 9.1 million STIs occur among 15–24-year-olds.
• Comprehensive sex education, including information about both abstinence from sexual intercourse and how to use contraceptives, has been proven to persuade teens to delay first sex and to practice safe sex when they become sexually active.

At the state level, legislators are making attempts to regulate teen sexual behavior as well, by requiring family planning clinics to involve parents when young people seek birth control, although so far these efforts have been successful only in Texas and Utah. In fact, research shows that family planning clinics make great efforts to encourage teens to consult their parents about sex and birth control, and that the majority of teens already involve their parents. Further, those who don’t frequently have good reason for not doing so, and if required by law to involve a parent, many would stop using contraceptives at all—thus putting themselves at risk for unintended pregnancy and STIs.

"Mandating parental involvement for contraception could backfire, driving young people to have unprotected sex and putting their health and lives at increased risk," says Rachel Jones, author of "Do U.S. Family Planning Clinics Encourage Parent-Child Communication? Findings from an Exploratory Survey." "By instead promoting medically accurate education and access to services, and by encouraging parent-child communication, as many clinics are already doing, we can help today’s teens grow up to be tomorrow’s healthy adults."