Abstinence

THIS IS a story of a girl who had options: abstinence, birth control or abortion. Instead, she chose not to even think of those first two options when having unprotected sex. Nor did her boyfriend. Tamika Fowler's family seemed to be otherwise engaged and did not notice that their daughter was suffering mentally. Post-partum depression is real and Tamika Fowler could have gone to any doctor's office or hospital and said, "I need help. I might hurt my child. " She chose not to. These young girls don't even attempt to abstain or get birth control.

In an emotional news conference in the Indiana district his family called home for well over a century, GOP Rep. Mark Souder announced yesterday that he had had an extramarital affair and would give up his seat in the House of Representatives on Friday. "I am so ashamed to have hurt the ones I love," the eight-term congressman said at a televised news conference in Fort Wayne. "I am sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have worked so hard for me. " Politically, Republicans will have to fight to hold the seat.

THANK YOU for your editorial on the failures of abstinence-only sex education ("Congress Should Cut Out Sex," Jan. 12). Research clearly shows these programs are a waste of money, and should be one of the first cuts in this era of budgetary shortfalls. It's bad enough that we're spending vast sums of money on programs that don't work. What's worse, however, are the consequences of failing to teach teens how to protect their health. When teens have sex without the knowledge and confidence to use birth control and condoms, they are put at risk for sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

The universal passion for passion remains as strong as ever. The decline in singles bars and discos indicates only that the scene has shifted elsewhere. It does not mean a diminishing of sexual activity. Of course, people are exercising more care in choosing partners, but in spite of this, AIDS continues to spread rapidly. Two means of slowing down, if not stopping, this terrible epidemic are offered: One is abstinence, the other is use of condoms. Both require sex education to be effective.

True Love Waits, a musical drama advocating sexual abstinence before marriage, will be presented at 6 p.m. Sunday at Trinity Assembly of God Church, 1022 Pottstown Pike, West Chester. The production, staged by Trinity's Youth Choir and its Greater Love Youth Ministries, is part of "the international sexual-abstinence campaign reaching hundreds of thousands of teens across the globe," said the Rev. William Lorman, youth pastor at the church. Following True Love Waits, singer Jonathan Pierce will present a concert of contemporary Christian music.

The Bush administration's proposal for $15 billion for the prevention of HIV and treatment of people with AIDS in developing countries, which Congress is hastening to the President's desk, is welcomed by all of us combating HIV in those countries. But there is an immediate concern that the ultimate effectiveness of President Bush's plan is being threatened. In the bill passed in the House and used as a template in the Senate, one-third of all funds for prevention must be directed to abstinence-until-marriage campaigns.

Miss America 2003 Erika Harold said pageant officials tried to bully her into not talking about sexual abstinence during her reign. Harold, 22, of Urbana, Ill., was furious after pageant officials told her not to talk about it during an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington this week. "I will not be bullied," she told reporters at the event. Harold is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Illinois who put off enrolling at Harvard Law School to compete for Miss America.

At a time when teenagers need a clear message about safe sex, Pennsylvania is sending the wrong signal. For the first time in several years, the state Department of Health is seeking $1.7 million in federal funds that would be allocated to public schools and organizations to teach abstinence-only sex education. That's an abrupt shift for the Rendell administration, which has not disbursed such funds since the governor took office in 2003. Studies have given failing marks to abstinence-only education programs, which have proved ineffective in delaying sexual activity by teenagers.

Bensalem High School's auditorium contains 2,004 seats. Last Thursday night, nearly all of them were empty during a special program for parents that promoted sexual abstinence among their teenagers. The lack of parental interest - counselor and program organizer Robin Golden can't quite figure out why - came on the same day that the national Centers for Disease Control released a major 1990 study about sex and children. Statistics showed that most students have sex by age 16, and that one in five have had multiple partners.

Last October, Betty Jean Wolfe asked a Philadelphia School District committee to try out an eight-session, federally funded sex education program based on the concept that teenagers should abstain from sex until marriage. It would be hard to imagine a more tentative proposal than the one made by Wolfe, a former insurance executive turned abstinence educator for the Family Life Educational Foundation. She was asking only that it be tested as an experiment at two schools. Not that the program, called Project Reality, is all that experimental.

RE: PHOTO of the Day showing a horse abandoned in a trash-strewn lot in Kensington, and a related FOX 29 interview: George Bengal, a PSPCA official, stated that there was no ordinance regarding owning a horse in a residential area in Philly. City Council members, it's about time we draw one up, don't you think? An empty lot or yard is not proper shelter for a horse. Unfortunately, if you know the area the horse was found in, then you know they didn't have the financial means to own and care for a horse properly.

KENDRA G tells the story of going to a Philadelphia public school and asking a group of about 30 seventh- and eighth-grade girls how many wanted to be married. Four raised their hands. Then she asked how many of them wanted to be mothers. Almost all raised their hands. These girls all wanted to be unmarried mothers, or "baby mamas," as they're commonly called. The idea of becoming a wife first was a foreign concept, which isn't surprising considering that a staggering 72 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock.

Being a celeb means you have to sell your body, your sass, your zest, your je ne sais quoi as if it were so much product. But what if you also have been called by a higher purpose to spread a soul-searing soul-message to help save America's very soul? That's the bind that binds Bristol Palin , torn as she is between Bristol Sexy Dancing With the Stars Star - flashing serious epidermis as she rumba'd with dancer Mark Ballas - and Bristol Teen Mom and Abstinence Standard-Bearer.

From a shy seventh grader to senior class president at Girls High School, Brittany Paris, 18, has come a long way. Headed to Howard University in August, Paris plans to major in pharmaceutical practices. But there's something else that makes Paris stand out. She's made a vow of celibacy until marriage, and she's proud to talk about it. "I'm not scared to speak out. I do things on my own, even if no one else is doing them," said Paris, who credits a program known as Teenshop and its Saturday workshops over the last six years with giving her the confidence to stay on her life path.

In an emotional news conference in the Indiana district his family called home for well over a century, GOP Rep. Mark Souder announced yesterday that he had had an extramarital affair and would give up his seat in the House of Representatives on Friday. "I am so ashamed to have hurt the ones I love," the eight-term congressman said at a televised news conference in Fort Wayne. "I am sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have worked so hard for me. " Politically, Republicans will have to fight to hold the seat.

RECENT reports about an uptick in teen pregnancy in the U.S. should give every parent pause, especially given newly released statistics that we have the highest teen pregnancy rates of any Western industrialized nation. The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that for the first time in more than a decade, teen pregnancies were up (3 percent in 2006) and abortions rose by 1 percent following a decline in both from 1994 to 2000. There's nothing like peer pressure to influence a curious teenager, and when young people aren't well-grounded in a strong value system, they are at serious risk for getting themselves into some precarious situations.

He must have learned something How many extraordinarily successful Catholic elementary school graduates can tell funny stories from their formative years like Lanny Morgnanesi ("The nuns predicted I would end up here," Friday)? I really don't believe he waited until high school to begin to learn how to read, write, and learn. His writing is a testimony to the effectiveness of his elementary school and the commitment of his teachers. For those of us who enjoy writing like Morgnanesi's, the loss of St. John Bosco Catholic School and others like it is a real loss for the development of talent like his. Robert J. Miller Elkins Park The horror of his ways Seventy-five years ago, I was born into a pioneering dysfunctional family.

The National Organization for Women and other feminist groups have vehemently opposed abstinence education - while failing to notice that a casual-sex culture hasn't been so liberating for women. Just ask the 29-year-old Briton living in America whose anonymous account appeared in her country's Guardian newspaper. She wrote: "[M]y sexual liberation was perversely trapping me in destructive relationships, while intimacy had become something elusive, insubstantial, disappointing, surreal.

Proponents of abstinence-only sex education declared victory earlier this month after a study from the University of Pennsylvania found that a program for Philadelphia sixth and seventh graders deterred young teens from having sex. Abstinence Clearinghouse, an advocacy group, proclaimed on its Web site that the study proved "comprehensive sex ed a big flop. " Not so fast, says the study's lead author, Penn sociologist John Jemmott. Jemmott's study, published in this month's issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, examined an abstinence program that would not have qualified for federal funding during the Bush administration.

BRISTOL PALIN the poster girl of abstinence-only education who ended up pregnant and unmarried - turns out to be part of an unfortunate trend. Teen pregnancies and abortions in the United States - which had dropped steadily for two decades - are rising again, according to a report released this week by the Alan Guttmacher Institute that was based on government data. Teen pregnancy rates rose 3 percent from 2005 to 2006; the number grew by 30,000. Teen abortions rose 1 percent. The rise comes after a decade in which the federal government spent $1.5 billion on abstinence-only education programs.