Virginity pledges don't reduce rates of STDs, study finds
By JILL MAHONEY
Saturday, March 19, 2005 Page A10
SOCIAL TRENDS REPORTER, GLOBEANDMAIL.COM
Young adults who take "virginity pledges" have similar rates of sexually transmitted diseases as their peers, according to a new study that debunks the effectiveness of a major element of the abstinence movement.
The research also found that virginity pledges -- usually public, signed statements linked with schools, community groups or churches in which adolescents promise to delay having sex until marriage -- may even encourage high-risk sexual behaviour, as those who make the pledge are less likely to use condoms and seek treatment for STDs.
"Advocates for abstinence-only education assert that premarital abstinence and postmarital sex are necessary and sufficient for avoiding negative consequences of sexual activity, such as STDs," says the study, published yesterday in the Journal of Adolescent Health. "This assertion collides with the realities of adolescents' and young adults' lives."
Lead author Hannah Bruckner, a sociology professor at Yale University, said in an interview that the findings indicate abstinence-only education isn't sufficient to prevent teenagers from contracting STDs.
"It can't be enough because eventually, even the most abstinent adolescents, the great majority of them will have sex. . . . We need to provide education that helps in dealing with it when they do it."
Since pledgers are later to engage in sexual activity, have fewer partners and marry earlier, Prof. Bruckner and the study's co-author, Peter Bearman of Columbia University, expected to find lower STD rates among that part of the population (about 12 per cent of all U.S. adolescents).
However, they discovered that young adults who claimed to be virgins were in fact having premarital sexual contact.
The researchers' analysis of 11,471 adolescents is drawn from the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which is a representative study of students enrolled in Grades 7 to 12 in 1995, as well as in a follow-up survey in 2001-2002, when participants, who were then 18 to 24, were tested for STDs.
Although many avoided vaginal intercourse to "technically preserve their virginity," Prof. Bruckner said, they were more likely than their counterparts to have oral and anal sex, and to do so without condoms.
"If [pledgers] do have sex, they go into this experience with the idea that, 'Oh nothing can protect me anyway, so why even bother to think about uncomfortable stuff and gross stuff like condoms.' That's the problem."
As a result, those who took virginity pledges had similar rates of STDs, including chlamydia and gonorrhea, as their counterparts who did not vow to remain virgins until marriage. Of the non-pledgers, 6.9 per cent had STDs, compared with 4.6 per cent of those who did pledge their virginity. (The difference is not statistically valid because it is lower than the margin-of-error estimate, Prof. Bruckner said.)
Another reason behind the findings may be that parents and doctors and other health professionals believe discussing contraceptives and STD tests is unnecessary with those who make virginity pledges.
As well, such adolescents "might just not perceive their risk in the right terms," she said. They also have a compelling reason to keep their activities secret.
"If young people take a public virginity pledge to remain virgins until marriage, having sex before marriage means that they break their pledge. Thus, sexually-active pledgers have a greater incentive than non-pledgers to hide that they are having sex," the study says.
(Because some abstinence groups allow the participation of non-virgins, some may have contracted STDs before pledging abstinence. However, the researchers found the non-virgins did not alone account for the STD rates.)



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