Isn’t the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections getting lower?
• Last year, the CDC released results of a study estimating that 26% of American girls between the ages of 14 and 19 – 3.2 million teenage girls – are infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. Even more shocking, the study also found that nearly half of the young African-American women (48 percent) were infected with an STI. Virginity pledges seem to be popular. Shouldn’t we encourage our child(ren) to take a virginity pledge • Virginity pledges, one of the common tools used by abstinence educators, have been shown not to be effective. Teens who sign virginity pledges are one-third less likely to use contraception when they do become sexually active, placing them at a higher risk of sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy. • The January, 2009 issue of PEDIATRICS, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, contains a study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health comparing the behavior of teenagers who too
