The New York Times editors have had to eat their recent words dismissing abstinence education as a “narrow, ineffective and fundamentally dishonest approach” not worthy of federal funding or, by implication, any funding whatsoever.

In an editorial acknowledging the important new study showing clearly the greater effectiveness of abstinence-only education compared to other approaches or none, the Times has to concede:

The only program that successfully delayed the start of sexual activity was the abstinence-only instruction. By the end of two years, only a third of the abstinence-only group had engaged in sexual intercourse compared with almost half of the control group.

Predictably the paper, which has an irrational faith in the effectiveness of teaching teenagers to use contraception, makes it’s concession a grudging one, sniping at abstinence advocates for making too much of one study, “misreading” its implications and trying to promote… click here to read whole article and make comments