Abstinence end just one defeat

The legislative expiration of the Title V Abstinence Education program -- created in 1996 to distribute $50 million to states for activities meeting an unprecedented, eight-point definition of abstinence education -- will be just the first domino to fall. The Obama administration has asked that the fiscal 2010 funding of Title V -- plus that of the Community-Based Abstinence Education and Adolescent Family Life programs (about $177 million) -- be redirected to a teen-pregnancy prevention initiative. Congress has yet to craft the new program, and there's a tug of war going on between comprehensive-sex-education advocates and teen-pregnancy-prevention advocates over the mission of the new program. More on that in other columns. But what about abstinence education? Where does the movement go from here? Washington Times