Teen birth figures highlight need for better sex education

A December report that the nation’s teen birthrate rose for the first time in 15 years lends support to the argument that abstinence-only sex education programs are failing many of America’s young people.

For 2006, Western North Carolina’s teen pregnancy rate among girls 15-19 stayed about the same as it’s been since 2003, about 59.6 per 1,000 women, according to an October report.

That should be good news in light of the rising national rates, but there’s more to the story.

Until 2006, the national birthrate had been dropping since its peak in 1991. Between 2005 and 2006, it grew by 3 percent, from 40.5 per 1,000 in 2005 to 42 per 1,000 in 2006. In 1991, the peak for teen births, there were nearly 62 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19.

In other words, in Western North Carolina, we’ve held steady for three years just shy of the national peak.

Rep. Fisher’s bill

It’s a shame a bill sponsored by Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe, that would have required school districts to provide comprehensive sex education classes for students in seventh grade and above failed to make it out of the education committee during the 2007 General Assembly session.

It would have relieved school systems of the obligation to hold public hearings before installing a comprehensive sex education curriculum and of asking parents to consent or refuse to allow their children to participate, though it would have allowed parents to take their children out of sex education classes.

Fisher’s bill can’t be brought up during the short session this year because it failed to pass either the House or the Senate, but Fisher said earlier this week that it’s still being talked about in the Democratic Women’s Caucus and that she intends to introduce it again in 2009.

If the statistical trend continues in the wrong direction, as many experts fear it will, the bill may have a better chance in a couple of years.

More diseases

In addition to an increase in the number of teen births, some key sexually transmitted disease rates are on the rise including syphilis, gonorrhea and Chlamydia.

It’s part of the same phenomenon, said Dr. Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health.

The December report offers a state-by-state breakdown of birthrates. Many of those with the highest birth- rates teach abstinence instead of comprehensive sex education, according to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

As Fisher pointed out when her bill was being considered, despite an abstinence-until-marriage curriculum, research shows that the majority of young people do not wait until they are married to have sex. Sixty-three percent of high school seniors in the state report having had sex, she said.

A study ordered by Congress and released in April found that students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not. They also reported having similar numbers of sexual partners and first having sex at about the same age as other students — about 14.9 years.

In other words, abstinence-only programs don’t work if the goal is to prevent teen pregnancy and disease transmission by preventing teen sex. As a result, teens are having sex without accurate, factual information about the potential consequences of their behavior.

Better to inform

Withholding age-appropriate information about sex from curious young people trying to make sense of their emotions and developing bodies leaves them vulnerable to making uninformed decisions that can alter their lives forever, sometimes tragically.

Many abstinence-only proponents believe it should be up to parents to provide guidance about sex to their teen-agers. While that’s true, for whatever reason, many parents don’t. That leaves many vulnerable young people whose futures are on the line.

If they make bad choices without fully understanding the consequences, not only they, but the larger community, will suffer. Teen-age mothers often don’t complete high school and babies born to them are more likely to be neglected and abused, often perpetuating or setting in motion a cycle of poverty and dependence on services paid for by taxpayers.

Fisher’s bill could help empower young people with age-appropriate information to which they have a right. Here’s hoping it becomes law the next time it’s introduced.

Meanwhile, if you have a teen and you haven’t talked with him or her about sexually transmitted diseases, birth control methods and the financial, emotional and other obligations that accompany parenthood, now, as the New Year begins, would be a good time to have that discussion. If you din’t know where to start, ask a librarian for books and Internet resources that offer guidance.

It may be one of the most important conversations you ever have with your child.

Tragic teenager illustrates steroids culture

Taylor Hooton was a month past his 17th birthday when he buckled two belts together, fastened one end to his bedroom door, wrapped the other round his neck and hanged himself.

An autopsy after Hooton's suicide on July 15 revealed the presence of the steroids 19-norandrosterone and 19-noretiocholanolone in his system.

Hooton, an aspiring baseball pitcher described as a popular and ebullient student at the Texas college of Plano West north of Dallas, had taken steroids to build himself up and compete more effectively in his senior year,

The drugs worked. In three months Hooton put on 12 kgs. But he also experienced the sudden mood switches consistent with steroid abuse, alternating euphoric highs, violent aggression and ultimately the severe depression which led to him taking his life.

His father Don, who with his mother Gwen has devoted himself to campaigning against steroids in schools and who has set up his own Web site (www.taylorhooton.org), says steroid use among teenagers is tied up with the American dream.

"They're doing it to succeed because they think it might help them to set up a scholarship," he said. "Taylor was a top-notch student. He, like so many, was doing it because it might make him better."

The tragic tale underscores the forbidding obstacles facing the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in its never-ending fight for drug-free sport only eight months out from the Beijing Olympics.

Balco Victim

In 2007, the Balco laboratory scandal claimed its biggest victim.

Marion Jones, the triple Sydney Olympic gold medallist, finally admitted after years of denial that she had taken Balco's most potent steroid tetrahydrogestrinone. Jones used the so-called 'clear', specifically designed to fool testers, before her 2000 triumphs.

Jones, the heir to Carl Lewis as the world's leading sprinter and long jumper, broke down in tears at a news conference in which she confessed to drug abuse.

Her audience, many of whom had not trusted anything she said about drugs after her then husband CJ Hunter revealed in Sydney that he had tested positive for huge amounts of nandrolone four times during 2000, remained dry-eyed. She was subsequently stripped of the record five track and field medals she won in Sydney and accepted a two-year ban.

Last month baseball slugger Barry Bonds, the 43-year-old record holder for home runs and, with Jones, Balco's most high-profile client, was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Bonds pleaded not guilty at a hearing on December 7 with the next hearing scheduled for Febraury 7.

"During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances for Bonds and other professional athletes," said the indictment, filed in the U.S. district court in San Francisco.

In August, Bonds, broke Hank Aaron's home run record of 755 set in 1974 to a rapturous reception by San Francisco Giants fans and a mixture of outrage and indifference elsewhere.

No athlete, not even Ben Johnson who was at the centre of the biggest scandal in Olympic history when he tested positive at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, has changed shape as dramatically as Bonds, now unrecognisable as the slim youth who first made his name with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Mitchell Report

Bonds has admitted using substances produced by Balco but always denied any knowledge that they might have been prohibited. His personal trainer Greg Anderson had been jailed on steroid distribution charges and, after his release, was sent back to prison for declining to co-operate in the Bonds investigation.

A report by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell this month named Bonds and former New York Yankee Roger Clemens, his league's top pitcher for a record seven times, as steroid users. "For more than a decade there has been widespread anabolic steroid use," Mitchell told a news conference. "Everybody in baseball shares responsibility."

Another American, cyclist Floyd Landis, was banned from his sport for two years in September after a French laboratory found traces of synthetic testosterone in a sample he provided during the 2006 Tour de France. Landis was the first rider to be stripped of the Tour title.

An unprecedented spate of doping scandals in an already tarnished sport led last month to one of the oldest sponsors, Deutsche Telekom, ending its support of team T-Mobile in order "to separate our brand from further exposure from doping in sport and cycling specifically".

T-Mobile had embraced a policy of zero tolerance, sacking German Patrik Sinkewitz and Italy's Lorenzo Bernucci following positive dope tests and dismissing Ukrainian rider Serhiy Honchar for breach of conduct.

The company's withdrawal came a month after the International Cycling Union (UCI) and WADA announced the creation of the toughest anti-doping measures in sport, taking blood samples from all professional riders next year to create medical profiles which can then be checked after doping tests.

Former Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis admitted he had used doping during his victorious ride in 1996 and fellow Dane Michael Rasmussen was sacked by his Rabobank team as he led this year's Tour for lying about his training programme.

Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov was found guilty of blood doping during the race. He and his Astana team were expelled and Vinokourov retired after he was suspended for a year.

The Cofidis team pulled out of the Tour after Cristian Moreni tested positive for excessive testosterone while Erik Zabel, who had won a record six green jerseys on the tour, also admitted to doping.

Last month WADA had their first change of president when the outspoken Canadian Dick Pound, who had headed the agency since its inception in 1999, was succeeded by former Australian Finance Minister John Fahey.

Pound had his critics. His flair for the eye-catching phrase and his criticism at various times of USA Track & Field, the National Hockey League and cycling led to a reprimand from the International Olympic Committee.

It could equally be argued that some plain speaking on the cancer of drugs was just what international sport needed.