Abstinence Campaign Targets Parents

Abstinence-based sex-ed advocates have launched a campaign to rally a million parents to support the method, the Washington Post reports. The $1-million Parents for Truth campaign has sent e-mails pushing the approach to some 30,000 supporters and parents, with plans to to contact 100,000 more this week. The group hopes parents will lobby local schools and elect officials to support a focus on abstinence.

The move comes as Congress is mulling devoting $190 million in federal cash to abstinence-driven programs; a number of studies have suggested that they aren’t effective, prompting many states to reject funding for them. “Parents are being misled,” says the director of the effort. Most current programs that claim to stress abstinence “provide explicit how-to information that give teens a green light for activities that put them at risk,” she says. (More sex stories.)