In Washington, D.C. April 23, 2008- 2154 Rayburn House Office Building, it was another “balanced” Congressional hearing on abstinence education with six “experts” testifying against it and one testifying in support of it. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, explained that,

we will hear today from multiple experts that after more than a decade of government spending, the weight of the evidence doesn't demonstrate abstinence-only programs to be effective. In fact, the government's own study showed no effect for abstinence-only programs.

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Chapter 16

It was true! A widely reported 2007 government-sponsored review of four abstinence programs conducted by the Mathematica Policy Research in Princeton, NJ found that 4 to 6 years after having been exposed to an abstinence education program, students who had been exposed to abstinence education in elementary or middle school were no less likely to have had sex or to have fewer partners in high school than students who received no such education. In the days and weeks following the release of the “Mathematica report” hundreds, if not thousands, of headlines in the United States and around the world proclaimed that a government-funded study had proved that “ABSTINENCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS DON’T WORK!” Of course, one wonders how many high school students remember anything they were taught four to six years earlier, when some were in the 4th or 5th grade.

Believe it or not, the real issue at the Congressional hearing wasn’t really whether or not abstinence education worked. When asked by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) if they would support abstinence education if evidence showed that it was effective, five of the six "health experts" who testified against it, including Dr. John Santelli, from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, Dr. Margaret Blythe, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Max Siegel from the AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth, and Families and Shelby Knox, a “youth speaker,” said they would oppose abstinence even if scientific evaluation showed it to be as or more effective than so-called comprehensive sex ed. Dr. Harvey Fineberg of the Institute of Medicine was the only one in this anti-abstinence group to maintain a sense of scientific integrity by quietly answering yes.

Why would five critics of abstinence education say they would oppose it even it was proved to be effective? If their main concern isn’t preventing teen pregnancy and infection with STDs, then what is?