Word: sulak
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...proposal to boost abstinence funding by 33% to $135 million, those allegiances are shifting. A small but vocal cohort of doctors has gone to the abstention side. "I used to think all we had to do was dump condoms in the schools and be done with it," says Sulak. "But after reviewing the data, I've had to do a 180 on kids...
...turnabout is proving contagious. Sulak has sold her slide kits to health-care workers in 44 states. More significant, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which has long been on the other bank of the sex-ed divide, will honor her with a presidential award next spring. Meanwhile, a group of more than 400 doctors collaborated on an abstinence CD-ROM, Prescriptions for Parents: A Physicians' Guide to Adolescence and Sex, released last month by the National Physicians Center for Family Resources. "Parents and children want medical facts, not a one-sided moralist approach," says Dianna Lightfoot, the center...
...some doctors. Though the particulars of HPV remain something of a medical mystery, we have learned at least one frightening thing about the disease: HPV is spread through skin-to-skin contact of genitals and their surrounding areas, so condoms do not always protect against it. Which means, as Sulak is fond of saying, there is no such thing as safe...
...That Sulak should be leading this charge is a little surprising. She is a highly respected contraceptive expert who has devoted the past decade to researching the birth-control pill. She came to her latest cause seven years ago when she was asked to help choose a sex-ed program for her son's middle school. The curriculums she examined were steeped in ideology and medical errors. So she designed one, drawing extensively on data from the National Institutes of Health and the CDC. "All we've done is state facts," she says, "and you can't argue with facts...
...those facts are framed is drawing fire from both sides. Some hard-line conservatives, who see sex ed as the one culture war in which they have had consistent successes, contend Sulak doesn't do enough to promote the sanctity of marriage, a condition of receiving federal abstinence funding. Nor are they particularly pleased by the prospect of young children spending part of their school days looking at cervixes. Says Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse: "I've raised five abstinent children without showing one of them diseased genitals...