The question is: How did Rosenbaum come up with those 100 variables? The answer is simple. She chose them at will. What criteria did she use to choose them? The author of the article does not say, but it is easy to imagine that Rosenbaum chose the ones that would not take her new "conclusions" too far from an essay she wrote in 2006, when she was still a student at Harvard, eloquently entitled: "Reborn a Virgin: Adolescents’ Retracting of Virginity Pledges and Sexual Histories."
Rosenbaum has clearly an issue with abstinence programs in general and virginity pledges in particular.
And her issues come in handy for the timing and the true purpose of the article:
"The findings are reigniting the debate about the effectiveness of abstinence-focused sexual education just as Congress and the new Obama administration are about to reconsider the more than $176 million in annual funding for such programs."
The "findings" are "reigniting the debate?" What debate? Who is debating? Stein wants you to think that there is actually a "debate…" to which he is already offering you a conclusion. The non-existing "data" and Rosenbaum are just the excuse to ask Obama to cut funding for abstinence-only programs and re-direct them to contraception-only ones. But of course, Stein doesn’t want to seem opinionated, so here comes the useful "pundit" to drop the real warhead for which the article is the missile:
"This study again raises the issue of why the federal government is continuing to invest in abstinence-only programs," said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "What have we gained if we only encourage young people to delay sex until they are older, but then when they do become sexually active -- and most do well before marriage -- they don't protect themselves or their partners?"
Never mind that the board of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy is a "who is who" of pro-abortion and pro-artificial birth control activists. Also, never mind that the organization has been systematically advocating against abstinence programs, ignoring several studies showing that young people who took the pledges in fact had lower rates of STDs, and engaged in fewer risky behaviors. They never follow the real data. Instead, they have been in the business of creating Rosenbaum’s type of data to follow their ideology.
Being the piece of propaganda that it is, the article cleverly uses a quote from Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association to serve as a token bow towards an "objective" perspective.
"It is remarkable that an author who employs rigorous research methodology would then compromise those standards by making wild, ideologically tainted and inaccurate analysis regarding the content of abstinence education programs."
Actually, it is not remarkable at all. It is just the boring 101 of how to deliver ideology under the disguise of science and journalism. Boring, but lethal, nonetheless.
Alejandro Bermudez
(Column continues below)
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