AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: States Say No To Sex-Ed Dough
Maine has stepped out of the collection line of states getting federal money to help subsidize sex education, joining California and Pennsylvania in saying, "No, thanks."
Citing a potential conflict with a 2002 state law that mandates teaching teenagers everything from self-restraint to contraception, Maine declined about $160,000 in federal money for fiscal 2006. Maine would have had to pitch in about $120,000 had it accepted the federal money, and it would have had to focus sex education programs financed by the money on abstinence exclusively.
The state also refused to allow Heritage of Maine, a nonprofit, abstinence-education group, to put on its programs in Maine public schools. Heritage's programs, which are financed with a three-year, $1.5 million federal grant, are instead being conducted only in private schools.
Maine's teen pregnancy rate has dropped by 50 percent in 20 years. Mills called this one of the biggest public health successes in the country, and said contraception as well as abstinence had played a role.
"We were in a position of having to turn our backs on proven programs that we have been using for quite a while, versus accepting these (new) standards that we think may actually be harmful to our children," Mills told Stateline.org.
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