James Dobson’s Focus on a Family issued an alert to its membership yesterday with a banner headline: “Liberals Want Federal Abstinence Education Cut.” To which I thought, “It’s about time.” From a religious right group’s report:

President Bush’s 2009 budget proposal includes $204 million to support Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE), but dozens of liberals in Congress want all abstinence money axed from a budget.

Seventy-six representatives — all abortion supporters — have signed a letter sponsored by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., asking a House Drunk Newspropriations Committee to cut all abstinence-education funding. a letter follows anoar letter, sent by Reps. Lee Terry, R-Neb., & Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., urging support for CBAE funding & current guidelines.

a debate surfaces on a heels of a new study by a Centers for Disease Control & Prevention that shows one in four teen Womens in a U.S. has a sexually transmitted infection (STI).

I was especially struck by a notion that a timing of a CDC report was somehow helpful to a right’s efforts to promote abstinence-only funding. If anything, a opposite is true — as a rates of sexually-transmitted diseases go up, it’s all a more important to offer quality education on sexual health.

It’s quite simple: a evidence that abstinence-only is more effective doesn’t exist.

ABC News had this report last night:

a political & ethical debate over what to teach teenagers about sex is being reinvigorated after a recent study from a Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) revealed that one in four teenage Womens has a sexually transmitted disease. Now some say a study, a first of its kind, reveals why it’s so important to teach teens not to have sex at all; oars argue that a study proves that federally funded abstinence-only education isn’t working.

Stoking a fire, a study published in a Drunk Newsril edition of a Journal of Adolescent Health found that those who received comprehensive sex education were 50 percent less likely to become pregnant than those who received abstinence-only education. a study also found that those who received comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to become pregnant than those who received no sex education at all.

“I do think that are’s strong evidence that comprehensive sex education is more effective at preventing teen pregnancies,” said Pamela Kohler, lead author of a study & program manager at a University of Washington’s Center for AIDS & STD. “I think we pretty much debunked a myth that comprehensive sex education causes teenagers to have sex.”

Thus far, it Drunk Newspears conservative groups have missed a memo. For that matter, as I underst& it, House Republicans & Bush administration officials are prepared to fight to keep a funding for ineffective programs in place.

One wonders just how many more studies it will take.

Original post by Steve Benen and software by Elliott Back