I had an interesting discussion with a friend recently. She comes from the left end of the spectrum, and I come from the right end -- but we both agreed that we simply wanted to support whatever worked to reduce teen pregnancy.

She tended to oppose abstinence-centered programs, saying the research was ineffective. I offered that I had looked into the the research and found that several prominent studies supposedly opposing abstinence were, in fact, fraudulent, and had results exactly opposite those reported.

She mentioned a particular program she had heard about recently, where, she said, teen pregnancy tripled under abstinence-based sex ed.

Thanks to NARAL (a special-interest lobby whose paying members have a clear financial incentive to favor policies which increase teen pregnancy), I found this report, which might have been the one my friend was thinking of:

This may seem impossible to you, but it’s true.

Sixty-five — again, 65 — of Timken High School’s 490 girl students are pregnant.

That’s a number confirmed by Principal Kim Redmond, whose staff, in less than a week, will inherit a problem it had no part in causing....

According to the Canton Health Department, through July, 104 of 586 babies born to Canton residents in Aultman Hospital and Mercy Medical Center — the county’s largest hospitals — had mothers between 11 and 19. That’s nearly 18 percent, or three times the total number of babies born at the same hospitals to teen parents living elsewhere in Stark County and beyond.

Wow. Three times the rate of babies born "at the same hospitals" to teens living elsewhere! Wait a minute! Look closer: What kind of a screwy statistic is that? "At the same hospitals?" That means they're using stats from only two hospitals, period!

Of course a given hospital or two will have more births from a particular area of one county, than other areas further away, "and beyond"! (Duh! People further away will frequently go to other hospitals!) So we're clearly staring at a fishy, cooked-up statistic.

(And, in fact, the teen pregnancy rate in Timken is actually 13% -- lower than some surrounding areas -- like Canton -- as you'll see demonstrated below. It is not three times the national average (8%), which is what a casual reader will undoubtedly be deceived into thinking the article above says. That trick alone should tip you off to the deception happening here.)

In other reports, like this one from ABC News, one mother blames her daugther's pregnancy on the school, apparently implying her daughter got pregnant because they were using an "abstinence-only" program:

Joanne Hinton, whose 16-year-old daughter, Raechel Hinton, is eight months pregnant, said she believes the school's abstinence-based sex education program isn't enough.

"It's time to take the blinders off and realize that these kids are having sex," she said. "Obviously, abstinence is not working. If we have to, just give them condoms." ....

The Hinton household has two loving parents with a strong relationship who asked the straight-A Raechel "45 times a week if she was having sex, doing drugs, drinking. We were constantly checking on her."

The reporter then quickly lays the blame for this sad situation on the Bush administration, far away in Washington DC:

Abstinence-based programs have been growing nationwide at schools over the past few years. In Ohio, the Bush's administration and the state's health department have awarded $32 million in grants to Ohio agencies for abstinence education since 2001.

And, to leave no doubt, the reporter then paraphrases Rachel Hinton to make it sound as though she and her peers didn't learn much about contraception:

Raechel, who plans to return to the 10th grade at Timken after delivering and completing an adoption, said many students are sexually active and need more information about birth control.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to interpret this given that her parents just claimed to be deeply involved in talking with her about sex. (Had she never heard of birth control from them either, then? How is that possible, if they discussed the topic 45 times a week?)

Something seems amiss here. Note it, we'll come back.

So there are three questions before us now: (1) Was Timken High School, in fact, using an abstinence-only sex-ed program? (2) If so, then why -- was it a state-wide thing, for example? (3) If so, then were these results typical and indicative of a trend in that same area?

Over at the leftist bastion Daily Kos, one Jeff Seeman (who appears to be running for office) also claims that Timken High had an abstinence-only program. As evidence he produced the following funding line item from this Ohio government report [pdf]:

Canton City Schools COC Program – Abstinence Education: This program is directed toward students at Timken Senior High School in Canton, with the intent of reaching 75% of the students.

But if we actually look at the report, what do we find? We find that the funding described there was only for the school year 2000-2001 -- those students would be long gone by now.

Further, other statements -- including the following one from the Timken High's principal -- seriously undercut allegation that the high school was still offering abstinence-only sex ed:

Timken, for instance, will roll out a three-pronged program addressing pregnancy, prevention and parenting. [Timken Principal Kim] Redmond isn’t saying exactly how the program will work — how it will compare to other such courses that have disappeared in recent times — but the goal will be to keep all students focused on their futures. [source]

And:

"There has not been an abstinence education program at that school for a minimum of two and a half years," [Valerie] Huber points out, "so the message of 'wait to have sex until you're married' has not been presented to those students for at least two and a half years." Nor, she adds, have the rationale and reasons for waiting been presented to the students in "a risk elimination-type model."

The abstinence education advocate believes Timken High School would do well to implement one of the two abstinence programs available in Stark County, where the school is located.

If these pregnancies happened after abstinence-focused programs had stopped at Timken, that would give quite the opposite impression, wouldn't it? Hey, I'm not the one necessarily trying to draw the link, but if you must, then perhaps this cuts the other way.

Additionally, there are two other apparently deceptive elements which are being infused into the reporting of this story. The first is that this area, being part of Ohio, somehow reflects a group of people who are Bush's ideological backer. But the truth is that Stark County, home of Timken High School Football "Trojans" (no kidding) actually went for John Kerry, not Bush. True, like elsewhere, it was close, but that certainly uncuts the "these are die-hard Bush people" depiction of the area: they generally went "blue", not "red".

The other element is that we hear that this is somehow the fault of an Ohio law which mandates "abstinence only" sex education. But this, again, is a deception. The law only requires abstinence be portrayed as the only 100% effective protection method (duh) -- and does not prevent schools from teaching about contraception, so long as extramartial sex is stigmatized. (Again, that seems like a non-controversial no-brainer, concerning kids under 18.)

And even if we assumed, for the sake of argument, that teaching contraception was banned (and it clearly isn't), that still wouldn't explain how it this law would only adversely affect Timken High School, and not the rest of Ohio, which, according to the Center for Disease Control, clearly does better than the national average in nearly every teen-pregnancy-related category:

So there you go -- Ohio outperforms the rest of the country in every category except condom usage among sexually active teens -- though that clearly seems to be because a lot more of them use the pill than the national average. And unsuprisingly, given those stats, Ohio has 0.2% less pregnancy overall than the national average.

So, if we're going to say the state is influened by this law, then... ?

And again, how could this Ohio law only negatively affect Timken High School -- and not the rest of the state? And if the law affects teen pregnancy rates at all, then why not also consider Ohio's relatively good record overall? And why don't critics seem to notice that nearby Canton had an 18% rate (5% higher), and Cleveland had a 20% rate -- 7% higher, and similar to many large cities around the country?

Furthermore, if you examine Ohio's stats between 1999 and 2003 (the aforementioned law was passed in 2000), you'll note that the same statics generally improved since the dreaded law was introduced (e.g. had sexual intercourse: 46.9% -> 41.7%; been/gotten someone pregnant: 5.1% -> 4.0%). So this law clearly isn't making things any worse.

Finally, rather than just leave this as a complete mystery, I'll offer my own theory: I suspect the huge round of layoffs that recently hit the community of Timken -- laying off an astounding 1,300 workers in 2004 alone -- may have had an effect, explaining the difference between this area and the rest of the state.

These pregnancies would have come right on the heels of that.

But of course that doesn't play neatly into anyone's sex-ed theories.

So instead we get deception upon deception, trying to make this one sad example appear representative of a state-wide policy -- when it clearly isn't, by every statistic I could find -- and implying that the pregnancy rate in Timken was three times the national average, when, in fact, it was actually many points lower than nearby areas like Canton and Cleveland.

UPDATE: It seems, from a source I found just after writing the above, that my guess was right on the mark -- a change in demographics had a lot to do with the increase in pregnancies:

DIANNE TALARICO, SUPERINTENDENT, CANTON CITY SCHOOLS: Timken Senior High School is located in the heart of downtown in Canton.... What's interesting in Canton... is that we've seen the socioeconomics change from 1998, seven years ago. They were at 40 percent poverty rate in Canton City Schools, and now we're close to 77. So it's almost doubled in seven years.

The poverty rate nearly doubled in this area in only seven years? Gee -- the demographics of the town completely changed! Would it have been too much to ask the press to include that little, tiny, insignificant fact in their reporting?

Oh, and the girl we heard from earlier? Who was paraphrased to give us the impression she and her peers didn't know much about birth control?

O'BRIEN: You know, that young woman we showed right at the beginning before we introduced you [a video clip of Rachel Hinton], she said she knows about birth control, she never thought it was going to happen to her. She considers herself a relatively educated young woman in this issue.

Ah, so she knew all along and considered herself, contrary to what her mother implied, "relative educated." So much for that bit of reportage. And, if that wasan't enough, here's more evidence to the contrary:

Her parents were giving the good old “birds and bees” talk. They already had covered abstinence. Now it was time to discuss birth control. Raechel’s mother, Joanne Hinton, showed how to use a condom by pulling one over a banana. Raechel and Joanne both laughed Thursday as they recalled the moment.

But while the memory stayed with Raechel, the learning session didn’t prevent her from becoming pregnant.

Yeah, but isn't that the main problem critics allege against most sex ed programs? Not that the kids have no idea what a condom is and what it does -- I mean, here's a girl whose mom is giving her the banana-demo -- but rather that simply knowing these things doesn't discourage kids from engaging in risky behaviors?

This take [signup required] sounds markedly different that the soundbite in ABC News, doesn't it?

Raechel said she’s used to seeing pregnant students at school. “Most of my friends thought they were pregnant, then they weren’t.” Most students end up parenting their babies, she said.

But Joanne wonders if the acceptance of teen mothers in high schools helps to glamorize the situation.

She hopes the school district moves forward with plans to broaden sex education classes. That means talking about how becoming pregnant too early can impact your life, and explaining methods for avoiding unwanted pregnancy. Information needs to be available in schools, Joanne said.

So the pregnant girl that ABC chose to portray as their 'expert' on what kids were thinking actually blames pregnancy on a lack of stigma. That's certainly quite a bit different than the few words that were widely reported.

How Dost Thou Deceive Thee?
Let Me Recount the Ways...

So, to recap:

* We were given a misleading statistic, implying Timken's pregnancy rate was three times the national average, when, in fact, it was lower than many nearby areas.

* It was implied this trend was indicative of Bush/Ohio policies, when, in fact, the area supported Kerry, not Bush, and had undergone severe demographic changes, with large increases in poverty.

* A state law is portrayed as opposing any kind of education except abstinence when it does no such thing: it simply demands abstinence be included.

* Furthermore, the law supposedly at fault applied to all of Ohio -- not just Timkin High School, and Ohio is better than the national average for pregnancy prevention stats.

* One pregnant girls mother's is quoted to imply that her daughter received an abstinence-only education, leaving her uninformed about contraception, when, in fact, her own daughter, the school principal, the superintendant, a state health official, and even the government funding reports cited by critics say or imply otherwise.

In short, we appear to have been conned yet again.

Why, it's almost like the media have an agenda or something.

Further Reading: Lying About Abstinence in Minnesota