Unfiltered Story #297211

At the time of this story schools could get extra funding for abstinence-only education that was not available for comprehensive sex ed education, which all but forced local schools to teach abstinence only education. This bothered me when I was a teacher as I felt the science was pretty clear that the same amount of sex was going to happen regardless of sex ed classes but comprehensive sex ed was better at lowering preteen birth rates. None the less I stuck to the abstinence curriculum I was required to teach.

Me: “Any other questions?”
Student: “It says that condoms are 85 percent effective and birth control pills are only 90 percent effective, but I always heard they were closer to 99 success rate”

*I was friends with the parents of this student, and as such I knew for a fact he had already had a more comprehensive sex education from his parents and should already know this, so I was confused why he would be asking. None the less I give him the ‘standard’ answer I’m suppose to give*

Me: “The 99 percent success rate you heard is the success rate if both forms of birth control are used perfectly. In reality people often misuse birth control, forgetting to take pills or not putting a condom on right. That means the effective success rate, when considering common mistakes people make in using the birth control, are equal to the first numbers.”
Student: “So they use the effective rate because they think it’s more accurate then using the best case rate?”
Me: “exactly. Any other que-”
Student: “What’s the effective success rate of abstinence?”
Me: “Huh?”
Student: “Well the book says abstinence is 100% effective, but that’s only if people do it perfectly, not the effective rate right? If one of the reasons the Pull Out method isn’t considered a viable method is that people fail to pull out as planned wouldn’t people having sex when the weren’t originally planning to lower the effective success rate of abstinence? It doesn’t seem fair to compare the effective success rate of other birth control to the ideal success rate for abstinence.”
Me: “I don’t know how one could possibly determine an effective rate for abstinence.”
Student: ” They did a study that showed that girls who signed a virginity pledge had a 30 percent chance of ending up pregnant before getting married after 5 years, while those that didn’t sign virginity pledges had only an 18 percent of ending up pregnant. So virginity pledges make you more likely to get pregnant, ‘t that mean abstinence success rate is negative? wouldn’t a 90 percent effective rate with birth control pills actually be a whole lot better?”

*Some of the class look shocked at this response, as if waiting for me to send my student straight to the principals office. However, most of the class seems more amused then anything, with a decent bit of snickering and commentary at this point, one boy gave a pretty vocal “Yeah!” to this comment.*

Me: “Are you going to tell me you just happen to know the pregnancy rate of teens who took virginity pledges off the top of your head?”
Student (now grinning widely at being ‘caught’): “I looked it up last night”
Me: “As I recall the scientists who performed that study concluded the difference was likely due to something called ‘selection bias’, the sort of girls likely to sign virginity pledges were also more prone to traits that put them at higher risk of getting pregnant, not that the act of signing the pledge made them likely to get pregnant. That doesn’t prove abstinence has a negative success rate. I don’t know of any study which could give a proper effective rate for abstinence. All I can say is successfully abstaining is the most reliable means to avoid pregnancy, and failing that please make sure you use at least one other form of birth control”

*I later told this child’s parents about his antics and they admitted that they had joked about doing something like this before to each other and he likely overheard it from them, but they would never have dreamed he would be brazen enough to actually do it. They had promised to ‘talk to him’ about his little stunt, but considering all three of us secretly agreed with his point and were honestly more amused then angered by it I doubt he faced any serious punishment.