11.02.07
Mere Cognitive Dissonance or Genuine Schizophrenia? You Decide.
From today’s Kaiser Family Foundation’s daily Women’s Health Report:
A House-Senate conference committee on Thursday approved a fiscal year 2008 appropriations measure that would include a $27.8 million increase in funding of abstinence education programs, CQ Today reports. The legislation combines a Labor-HHS-Education spending bill (HR 3043) with a spending bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction (HR 2642) (Wayne, CQ Today, 11/1).
Sixty-seven percent of U.S. adults favor allowing public schools to provide contraceptives to students, including 37% who favor providing them only to children whose parents have consented and 30% who favor providing them to all students who ask, according to a recently released Associated Press-Ipsos poll, the AP/Columbus Dispatch reports.
The poll, taken from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25, found that minorities, older and lower-income people are most likely to prefer requiring parental consent, while those who support no restrictions primarily are younger and from urban or suburban areas. People who oppose providing birth control at school are more likely to be white and higher-income earners. The majority of respondents said young people should have access to birth control either beginning at age 16 or age 18, compared with one-third who chose age 15 or younger.
The poll also showed that 51% of people believe sex education and birth control are more effective ways to reduce teen pregnancies than emphasizing abstinence and morality, compared with 46% who prefer moral and abstinence messages. About 64% of minorities and 47% of whites consider sex education and birth control the most effective method. Nearly seven in 10 white evangelicals said they prefer abstinence, as well as about 50% of Catholics and Protestants. About 62% of all people surveyed believe providing birth control reduces the number of teen pregnancies.
… The survey involved telephone interviews with 1,004 adults.