ONE IN THREE TEENS GET NO FORMAL EDUCATION ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL

From the Guttmacher institute today: the proportion of U.S. teens who had received any formal instruction about birth control methods declined sharply between 1995 and 2002, while the proportion who had received only information about abstinence more than doubled to more than one in five, according to “Changes in Formal Sex Education: 1995–2002,� by Laura Duberstein Lindberg et al., published in the December 2006 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Only 66% of males and 70% of females received formal instruction about birth control in 2002, compared with 81–87% in 1995. Black teens were even less likely than whites to have received any instruction about birth control methods. The public Health community needs to work more closely with the education establishment to correct this ignorance.