Kathleen M. Sullivan

About the author: Kathleen M. Sullivan is director of Project Reality, an organization that promotes abstinence education.

The opposition to abstinence-only sex education expressed by organizations such as the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) is misguided and selfserving. Giving young people information about condoms and other information about "safe" sex has helped to create an epidemic of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Children should be taught that abstinence is the only sure way to stay healthy and to prevent STDs.

Amazingly, some people in this country are vigorously discouraging state participation in the new provision for abstinence-education funding contained in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. They need to understand that abstinence until marriage is not a moral judgment—it is a prescription for physical...