Abstinence pledge ineffective, study shows

BALTIMORE, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Teens signing pledges to remain virgins until marriage are likely to engage in premarital sex and more likely not to use birth control, U.S. researchers report.

The analysis of federal survey data found more than half of teens became sexually active before marriage regardless of a "virginity pledge," The Washington Post reported Monday.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

Rosenbaum said she compared 289 students who were 17 years old on average in 1996, when they took a virginity pledge, with 645 who didn't take a pledge but otherwise showed similar attitudes about sex and birth control. By 2001, Rosenbaum found 82 percent of those who had broken their no-premarital-sex promise and and there was no significant difference in the proportion of students in both the pledgers and non-pledgers engaged in sexual activity.

"It seems that pledgers aren't really internalizing the pledge," Rosenbaum told the Post. "It seems like abstinence has to come from an individual conviction rather than participating in a program."

She said she found about 24 percent of those who had taken a pledge said they always used a condom, compared with about 34 percent of those who had not. The finding could be attributable to what teens learn about condoms in abstinence programs, she said.