Study: Abstinence May Lead to Risky Acts

Yahoo via AP ^ | Mar 18, 2005 | MATT APUZZO

[texaspirate]

Study: Abstinence May Lead to Risky Acts

1 hour, 35 minutes ago U.S. National - AP

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests.

The report by Yale and Columbia University researchers could help explain their earlier findings that teens who pledged abstinence are just as likely to have STDs as their peers. The latest study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had intercourse. That behavior, however, "puts you at risk," said Hannah Brueckner, assistant professor of sociology at Yale and one of the study's authors

[ruiner]

100% chaste as in doing NOTHING or just sex?

I can see sex abstinance being a good goal, but not all sexual activity.

[Modernman]

It's sort of the worst of both worlds: abstinence pledges don't really work, but when the kids actually have sex, they don't use adequate protection.

Teenagers will have sex. Always have, always will.

[Tench_Coxe]

"Who wants to bet the "researchers" are either from GLSEN which wants children to experiment with sex, pedophiles, or some other homo-advocacy group?"

Don't know if those groups specifically, but I would put money down that someone has an agenda behind this so called scientific study.

[ken21]

id'n that a variant of wha' michele jackson was saying:

--> if you don't masturbate you might rape someone?

[My2Cents]

Hairy palms.

[Ignatius J Reilly]

"Condoms have a certain failure rate, but so do abstinence vows"

and that condom failure rate goes up if you are uneducated (abstinance only), for example when we where in HS we all carried condoms in our wallets, not knowing that we where breaking them down, making them more likely to break. Fortunately (sigh) I never got to use the one I carried around

[JohnnyZ]

Prudes are just as likely to have STD's as sluts? No way.

It's more like "prudes" who pledge to do everything BUT vaginal intercourse are just as likely to have STD's as "sluts" who don't place such a priority on taking it up the butt.

[Mylo]

I hate to break it to some of these guys and gals; but if you do the butt, and blow like a pro you are NOT a Virgin, even if your hymen is perfectly intact.

[Minn]

I have a difficult time equating anal sex with abstinence.

[HitmanLV]

Captain Aceveda says 'What's so risky about sneaking a quickie from a streetwalker?'

[GovernmentShrinker]

Yep. And anybody who claims otherwise has their head in the sand.

[bahblahbah]

I really can't fathom anyone old enough to have sex to not know what a condom is and in turn be stupid enough not to use it right.

[durasell]

Yeah, but one day all this loose talk will haunt us. When the chickens come home to roosters.

[mountaineer]

I was chaste until I was married at the age of 39 and considered the choice neither unreasonable nor impossible. We are not, after all, junkyard dogs.

[CounterCounterCulture]

If you must know, first 38 years of my life of sexual abstinance with only the occasional but rare wet-dream.

I had hoped to have been married or engaged by the time I was 25, but life is sometimes a b****. Oh well. No regrets. No STDs. No ties or kids with women I don't love. No aborted babies on my conscious. It can be done.

[Campion]

The headline is a LIE.

If you read the article, they are comparing teenagers who took abstinence pledges TO OTHER ABSTINENT TEENAGERS, not to teenagers in general. Sure enough, they managed to prove that pledge kids are misbehaving. This gets translated into the headline "Abstinence causes risky acts," though both groups in the comparison are supposedly abstaining. Only in liberal la-la land can you compare kids who promise to be good with kids who actually are good, find the promisers coming up short, and say "being good is really being bad".

Probably all this proves is that many of the abstinence-pledge kids are operating from peer- or parental pressure, not from actual conviction.

For the libertine "all teenagers have sex, you can't stop it" crowd, the fine print in the article points out that 88 per cent of abstinence pledgers wait until marriage, versus 1 per cent of the population as a whole.

[Campion]

Teenagers will have sex. Always have, always will.

Not all. I didn't.

[Max in Utah]

I waited until I was 18, but that wasn't due to my choice.

[Campion]

For the libertine "all teenagers have sex, you can't stop it" crowd, the fine print in the article points out that 88 12 per cent of abstinence pledgers wait until marriage, versus 1 per cent of the population as a whole.

(fixed)

[CounterCounterCulture]

Teenagers will have sex. Always have, always will.

I didn't either. Disproves your assertion.