Thirty-six states (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) spent at least some of their funds from the federal abstinence-only education program to provide in-school instruction or presentations in FY 1999, according to an analysis by The Alan Guttmacher Institute. These funds were often granted not only to schools themselves but also to private organizations, including faith-based entities in 18 states. Overall, 11% of abstinence-only education dollars were spent through faith-based organizations.

Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia prohibited grantees under the federal program from providing information about contraception, even at a client's request, and even when using other sources of funding. Few ensured that the needs of important populations for whom an abstinence-only message may not apply (people who have been sexually abused, who are or may be homosexual, or who are pregnant or already parenting) are addressed.

The study, "States' Implementation of the Section 510 Abstinence Education Program, FY 1999," by Adam Sonfield and Rachel Benson Gold, public policy analysts with The Alan Guttmacher Institute, appears in the July/August 2001 issue of the Institute's bimonthly, peer-reviewed journal, Family Planning Perspectives. It is based on a 2000 survey of state abstinence education program coordinators to determine expenditures, activities performed and policies established under the abstinence education section of the 1996 welfare reform legislation (Section 510 of Title V of the Social Security Act).

States are required to match every four dollars in federal funds with three dollars in state or local funds, bringing the expected total public expenditure to $87.5 million each year for five years. The initiative was designed to emphasize abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage at any age, rather than premarital abstinence for adolescents, which earlier efforts typically stressed. This emphasis was embodied in an eight-point definition of "abstinence education" that includes a focus on the "likely" negative consequences to individuals and society of nonmarital sexual activity.

Senior policy associate and study author Rachel Benson Gold notes, "Another remarkable finding of this study is that many states are declining to formally define the term 'sexual activity.' In doing so, they are putting themselves in the difficult position of not clearly articulating what the abstinence education program is designed to encourage clients to abstain from. And this poses a challenge for program evaluation and implementation."