Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton vowed Thursday to boost U.S. spending on HIV/AIDS prevention and encourage abstinence and the use of condoms to eradicate it, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Part of the solution, she said, is to teach “abstinence, be faithful and use condoms if necessary.”

At the Global Summit on AIDS event, reiterated a $50-billion plan announced days ago to fight AIDS and malaria.

The plan would increase U.S. spending to fight AIDS by about 20%, according to David Bryden, a spokesman for the Global Aids Alliance. All of the Democratic presidential candidates have committed to the same funding proposal, he said.

Other presidential candidates weighed via a video about their stances on AIDS prevention and sex education.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney and Arizona Sen. McCain praised AIDS-fighting efforts initiated by President Bush, with McCain saying he would favor continuing an “abstinence-only approach” to education about sex and sexually transmitted diseases in U.S. humanitarian efforts abroad.

For more detail about the various presidential candidates’ stances on sex education, please see this related post. The Kaiser Network’s presidential news and analysis Web site gives a good overview of Clinton’s speech and other news outlets’ coverage.

In light of last week’s Democratic presidential debate in which Dennis Kucinich explicitly stated support for sex education and birth control, I wanted to post an overview of the candidates’ policies. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States posted a helpful policy update in August, based on candidates’ past speeches and public statements.

Here’s a summary of the a few of the candidates’ policies, according to SIECUS:

Democrats:

• Barack Obama supports sex education for kindergartners if it is age-appropriate, such as learning the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touching to educate young children on what to do if facing an abusive situation.
• Hillary Clinton was a co-sponsor of the Putting Prevention First Act, which would also establish a federal funding stream for comprehensive sex education.
• Dennis Kucinich is the only Democratic presidential candidate who has co-sponsored the Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act—legislation which would establish federal funding for comprehensive programs that teach about abstinence, condoms, and contraception.

Republicans:

• Rudy Giuliani’s position on sex education is somewhat unclear. As mayor of New York City, Giuliani supported condom availability in public schools, but hasn’t spoken publicly on his views since seeking the presidential nomination.
  
• Mitt Romney checked “yes” to the question, “Do you support the teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate health and sexuality education, including information about both abstinence and contraception, in public schools?” in a 2002 questionnaire from Planned Parenthood. But as governor of Massachusetts, he was a supporter of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
• John McCain supports abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

Women’s eNews offers additional information about even more candidates’ views.  You can watch last Thursday’s Democratic debate or read the transcript. The next presidential debate (Republicans) is scheduled for Nov. 28.

The Huffington Post blog included commentary about the Democrat-controlled Labor Health and Human Services Appropriations Conference Committee’s endorsement of a $141 million budget for community-based abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

The record-level increase, pushed by House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI), flies in the face of a congressionally mandated evaluation showing that abstinence-only programs have “no impact on adolescent behavior.” Astonishingly, the windfall was larger than what President Bush had been able to obtain from the prior conservative, Republican-controlled Congress!

I wrote a related post about the $28 million increase and about Obey’s support of the legislation, defying party politics.

The Genarlow Wilson case has thrust age of consent laws into the spotlight. Wilson was just released from prison on Oct. 26 after serving a two-year aggravated child molestation sentence for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. In Georgia, the age of consent is 16.

An Associated Press article yesterday quoted school administrators who said sex education needs to include information about age of consent laws because many people are unaware that consensual teenage sex is often a crime. Adding to the confusion, the legal age of consent varies by state, ranging from 14 to 18.

“We do a disgraceful job of educating kids about the very real consequences that they face,” said J. Tom Morgan, a former DeKalb County district attorney who has a new book coming out called “Ignorance Is No Defense: A Teenagers Guide to Georgia Law.”

“If society is going to punish them as adults,” said Morgan, “then society ought to educate them.”

The executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association countered this, saying federally-funded abstinence-only programs are encouraged to teach age of consent laws as part of their classes.

But Wilson said sex education classes are lacking.

“Most of the time they just tell kids, ‘Use condoms,’” Wilson told The Associated Press
“That’s not the only thing they need to know about sex. They need to know that they can actually go to jail.”

Are you aware of the age of consent laws in your state? Do you think the laws are overly confusing, considering that the consent also varies depending on the closeness in age of the two participants? I thought it was interesting that the article mentioned new “Romeo and Juliet” exceptions by some states to prevent sexually active teenagers from being lumped together with child molesters.

Curious about the laws in your state? Avert, an international AIDS charity, has compiled worldwide age of consent laws. (U.S. state-by-state laws are near the bottom of the table.)

In light of the recent debate about a Maine middle school’s decision to offer contraceptives, it’s interesting to learn about the faces behind the debate. The coordinator of the Portland schools nurses, Andrea Rowe, is also Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe’s wife.

Rowe, 53, said she was prepared for controversy when an advisory board that reviews sex education programming in the Portland schools decided that birth control prescriptions should be made available at the middle school health clinic.

But she did not expect a national debate.

It’s not clear to me that Rowe was actually the driving force behind the decision, but her and her husband have been drawn into the debate, nevertheless.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has abandoned federal legislation that would’ve required the government to fund only programs found to have “medically accurate” information about abstinence.

But after opponents said — wrongly, according to Lautenberg’s office — that the provision would wipe out funding for abstinence education, the Garden State lawmaker withdrew the provision, called an amendment in legislative parlance.

“We tried to make sure that any information that is passed is reliable, factual and honest. It looked like amendments were going to be offered that were deliberately punitive,” Lautenberg said. “Better judgment suggested that we shouldn’t offer it at this time.”

He said he’d offer it in the future.

Lautenberg previously introduced legislation, Responsible Education About Life Act, to change the government’s abstinence education program.

A report by a House panel found three years ago that 11 of the 13 types of federally funded abstinence initiatives contain “unproven claims and basic scientific errors,” Lautenberg said last week.

A press release issued by Lautenberg’s office stated that the legislation was in response to the Government Accountability Office’s Oct. 2006 “Abstinence Education: Efforts to Assess the Accuracy and Effectiveness of Federally Funded Programs” report. The report found that the federal government doesn’t review the content of major abstinence-only programs for scientific or medical accuracy.

According to the press release:

During the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of federally funded programs using curricula that provide medically inaccurate or misleading information. Some of these medical inaccuracies include teaching young people that HIV can be transmitted by sweat and tears, citing failure rates of condoms as high as 69 percent, as well as giving inaccurate symptoms and outcomes of sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, the federally funded programs provided erroneous information about basic scientific facts, such as stating that human cells have 24 chromosomes from each parent when in fact the number is 23.

This article raises the question of what, if anything, has been done to correct inaccuracies in abstinence education programs. Also, if there isn’t standardized review of curricula, it really seems that schools could be teaching anything they want, as long as it meets the basic criteria of abstinence-only versus comprehensive. Do you think there should be more standardization of sex education programs?

President Bush’s recent appointment of a pro-abstinence policymaker as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs (DASPA) has drawn criticism, according to a CBS news story. Dr. Susan Orr, an associate commissioner at the Department of Health and Human Services, would oversee Title X.

Title X is the federal program that provides birth control and other family planning services to lower income families.

Orr has been criticized as being anti-contraceptive. It probably doesn’t help that Orr is currently on the board of directors of Teen Choice, a non-profit groups advocating for abstinence in lieu of contraception.

In April 2001, when President Bush proposed ending contraceptive coverage for federal employees, Orr said, “We’re quite pleased because fertility is not a disease. It’s not a medical necessity that you have it.”

Orr said by not adding a “conscience clause” that would allow employers to withhold contraceptive coverage, the council would force employers “to make a choice between serving God and serving the D.C. government.”

“It’s not about choice. It’s not about health care. It’s about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death,” she said.

Liberal and conservative organizations alike had strong opinions about the appointment.

“The appointment of Susan Orr is a nightmare for anyone who believes in birth control and sex ed, and further evidence that the Bush administration is intent on appointing an anti-choice extremist to head Title X,” said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. “This is yet another example of the Bush administration putting politics ahead of women’s health care.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins rallied to Orr’s defense, saying her 2000 comments against health coverage for birth control were misconstrued and merely demonstrated her support of consumer choice of coverage. “The real question is why anyone would want to mandate that the insured buy coverage they do not want or currently need,” Perkins said.

What do you think of Orr’s appointment? Do you think it’s a conflict of interest for Orr, who is currently on the board of directors of Teen Choice (a non-profit group advocating abstinence in lieu of contraception) to be appointed to this position? Or do you agree with people who say liberals and the media are unfairly criticizing Orr?

For more:

Additional media coverage included articles in The Associated Press and The Washington Post.

Various organizations, including nonprofit religious corporation Focus on the Family Action Inc., UC Irvine’s New University, Center for American Progress Action Fund think tank, health policy organization The Kaiser Network and family advocacy site LifeSiteNews.com, provided commentary and additional coverage.

Blog discussions include The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire, Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, Feministe, The National Abortion Federation and RHRealityCheck.org.

Planned Parenthood posted an online petition against Orr’s appointment.

A New York Times op-ed columnist is arguing that abstinence-only sex education funding, which was recently expanded in a “bipartisan compromise,” could be better used to pay for children’s health insurance.

DEMOCRATIC leaders are right to contest President Bush’s veto of their bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance program. But sadly, their “bipartisan compromise” will leave millions of young Americans vulnerable to sickness and suffering of the most preventable kind.

To entice Republicans to support the bill, the House of Representatives agreed to increase money for abstinence-only sex education by $28 million, to a total of about $200 million a year…By dropping the financing for abstinence-only sex ed, Congress could save enough money to insure 150,000 children a year. And it would also demonstrate much needed resolve to protect all aspects of children’s health.

The Kaiser Network provides additional background and coverage of this topic.

The House in July voted 276-140 to approve a $152 billion fiscal year 2008 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill (HR 3043), which includes a $28 million increase from $113 million for HHS’ Community-Based Abstinence Education Program.
CBAE gives grants to groups that teach abstinence but not how to use contraception (Kaiser Daily Women’s Health Policy Report, 10/15).

I wrote a related post last week about the persistence of abstinence-only sex education funding despite the Democrats’ control of Congress.

The content of sex education programs can be a tricky issue for politicians, who risk alienating their political base by supporting federal funds for programs that their constituents object to.

The Los Angeles Times reported today that abstinence-only sex education, which has traditionally drawn most of its support from Republicans, continues to survive even though Democrats now control Congress.

Expectations that a Democratic-controlled Congress would gut abstinence-only education rose this spring after a major federally funded study concluded that such programs do not appear to have any effect on sexual abstinence among youth, nor on age of sexual initiation or number of sex partners.

Democrats have generally criticized abstinence-only sex education as ineffective, but David R. Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin and House Appropriations Committee Chairman, has departed from his party’s stance by supporting the abstinence-only approach.

Robert Rector, a senior policy analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he believes the Democratic party as a whole will strategically try to until after the 2008 presidential elections to revive the fight against abstinence-only education.

The Kaiser Network reported on the L.A. Times story and also provided some related content.