Humanists were outspoken in their disappointment about an amendment approved by the Senate Finance Committee late Tuesday night to bring back federal funding for abstinence-only education. The amendment, attached to the Max Baucus (D-Mont.) health reform package and offered by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), would provide $50 million each year through 2014 for abstinence-only education and bar those funds from being used for education about other sex-ed subjects, such as contraception. The amendment, if passed, would effectively reinstate the Title V abstinence-only program, which had expired on June 30.
"Abstinence-only education has been proven not to work," said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. "But Orrin Hatch doesn't seem to be interested in what the research shows--this is about enforcing his version of morality onto others that don't necessarily share it."
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