Fresh Updates from RAC

Last Thursday, the Center for Disease Control released new data indicating that between 2006 and 2010, approximately 60% of sexually active teenagers ages 15 to 19 were using “highly effective methods” of contraception, which include IUDs or implants, the pill or patch, and injectable contraception. Compared to 1995, this finding represents a 26% increase in users of highly effective methods, coupled with a 7% decrease in those who used “no method.” The CDC also reported last week that teenage girls are waiting longer to have sex: Over the same time period, 57% of girls ages 15 to 19 said they had never had sex—an increase of nearly 10 percentage points from 1995.

This new data about contraceptive use and the onset of sexual activity is particularly relevant considering that in 2010 the teenage birthrate fell to 34.3 births per 1,000 women 15 to 19 years old. This is the lowest teen birthrate since the U.S. government began tracking these statistics in 1940, although the United States still has one of the highest teen birth rates in the industrialized world.

Read more…

Yesterday morning, Rabbi David Saperstein stood with other leaders from the Washington Interreligious Staff Community (WISC) at a press event launching the 2013 Faithful Budget. The Faithful Budget’s Preamble and Statement of Principles reflects our Reform Movement’s understanding that the budget is an affirmation of our national priorities, an inherently moral document. The Faithful Budget was launched by the religious community to lift up voices of faith on behalf of the nation’s most vulnerable and to encourage the Administration and Congress to maintain a robust commitment to domestic and international poverty assistance programs.

The principles enumerated in this budget are as follows: restoring economic opportunity, ensuring adequate resources for shared priorities, prioritizing true human security, meeting immediate need, accepting intergenerational responsibility, using the gifts of creation sustainably and responsibly, providing access to health care for all, and recognizing a robust role for government. Read more…

In 1997, 14-year-old Robbie Kirkland took his father’s keys, unlocked the gun cabinet, removed a gun, closed the cabinet, and went to his attic, where he laid down on a mattress and shot himself in the head. Yet until 2010, the media largely ignored the epidemic of suicide and hopelessness among LGBT youth. Last September, media outlets reported the suicides of Billy Lucas (15 years old), Cody J. Barker (17), Seth Walsh (13), Tyler Clementi (18), Asher Brown (13), Harrison Chase Brown (15), Raymond Chase (19), Felix Sacco (17), and Caleb Nolt (14), who all took their own lives because of anti-LGBT bullying and a sense that they had no future.

Read more…

Today marks the 46th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which overturned a Connecticut law prohibiting the use of contraception. Although this decision is not as much of a household name as the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion, the 1965 Griswold decision made the latter possible by finding that married couples have a constitutional right to privacy. Seven years later, that right was extended to unmarried couples, and one year after that, it formed the bedrock of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Read more…

Earlier today Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced the Repealing Ineffective and Incomplete Abstinence-Only Program Funding Act, which would eliminate ineffective abstinence-only sexuality education programs and transfer the funds to existing comprehensive sexuality education programs. Comprehensive sexuality education programs encourage abstinence but also recognize the realities of sexuality and behavior among teenagers. They address issues relating to contraception and safe sex, delay the onset of sexual activity, reduce the number of partners, and decrease the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancy.

Read more…

Federal officials announced Tuesday that the 2009 U.S. teen birth rate dropped 6 percent from 2008. The new rate of 9.1 births per 1,000 teens (girls ages 15-19) represents the second consecutive drop and the lowest rate since the federal government began collecting reliable data almost 70 years ago. Sex education advocates on both sides of the debate–those in favor of abstinence-only programs that exclude information about safe sex vs. those in favor of comprehensive programs that teach students how to protect themselves if they choose to have sex–claimed their approach was responsible for the results, which were released in a preliminary analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Because abstinence-only sex education was the only form of sex education funded by the federal government in 2009, advocates such as Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association said, “These trends show that the risk avoidance message of abstinence has ‘sticking power’ for young people.”

But Huber’s comments fail to explain why teen birth rates had increased between 2005 and 2007, when abstinence-only sex education was also the norm. Furthermore, her comments don’t account for the fact that abstinence-only sex education has been shown to have no effect on the onset of teen sexual activity or a teen’s number of sexual partners.

Read more…

Stefanie Klein is a participant in the Machon Kaplan Summer Social Action Internship program, interning at Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom, a project of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

When you wake up in the morning what is first thing you do? For me, it’s to check your cell Phone, Facebook, and Twitter. I know most of you do this because I do it too. Recently Facebook and Twitter have been the fastest way to get information out to people. You can update a status or “tweet” almost instantly.

The organization that I am interning at SYRF, which stands for Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom, has me working on social media. Checking blogs, reading twitter there is always something new to find out. But how does this help get information out to people? When something is posted on Facebook or Twitter all of the fans/followers get automatic updates. These services are used by people of all ages so they don’t just go to one age demographic. It is the fastest way to tell people what is going on in the world. The Social Media aspect of SYRF and their parent organization the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, is good for pushing out information that they believe can be useful or reliable. The interesting aspect of this social media is there is almost an instant connection between the online followers and the organization.

Social Media is the new way of to disseminate news instantly; will you join the masses?

Here’s a disturbing piece of news: A recent CDC study found that 17 percent of sexually active teenaged girls use the “rhythm method” – timing sexual activity to avoid days on which the chance of conception is high.

There are so many problems with this that I hardly know where to begin. I’ll highlight the three that immediately come to mind:

• Millions of teenagers are taught abstinence-only sex ed, which in its failed crusade to prevent teens from having sex, neglects to teach anything about how fertility actually works – including when, if using the “rhythm method” to avoid sex.
• The rhythm method may reduce the chance of conception but it in no way protects against sexually transmitted diseases and infections.
• The rhythm method doesn’t work 25% of the time, according to the author of the study which discovered this trend.

The study also notes that this may be among the causes of the now increasing teen birth rate, which had previously been steadily declining through the 90′s and to 2005.

I am only six years out of high school, but for the first time, I’ll say it: What are they “teaching” in schools these days?