School Anti-Pregnancy Classes a Must : Every O.C. Junior High Needs a Program to Deter Female Teens--and Even Preteens

Contrary to what many people, especially teen-agers, might believe in view of the rising number of births to adolescent girls, most young teen-age and preteen students are not sexually active. Most abstain and should keep doing so, which is the message the state is trying to relay.

To get that word out and help prevent teen pregnancies, the state allocated $5 million to the Education Now and Babies Later program. The goal is to reach 200,000 12-to-14-year old students throughout California using high school students and adult volunteers to teach the “postponing sexual involvement” curriculum.

But in Orange County ENABL is available only in two schools, Kraemer Junior High in Placentia, where the county’s pilot program was launched, and the private Orangewood Adventist Academy in Orange. It has been approved in the Laguna Beach School District. Next month, the Santa Ana Unified School District, which has by far the highest teen pregnancy rate in the county, will decide whether to authorize the five one-hour sessions that are taught in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Cambodian.

Santa Ana should approve the program. All school districts should. There has been little opposition to the abstinence-oriented program at the junior high schools where it has been taught. Still, its administrators report that some districts shy away from it out of fear of adding “anything new, especially anything that deals with sex.” How shortsighted.

According to the latest statistics, the number of births to adolescent girls in the county shot up 55% between 1985 and 1990, while the number of girls ages 10-19 decreased. In the last decade, the annual birthrate among teen-agers in the county has increased disturbingly from 2,929 to 4,743 (it is estimated that an equal number of teen-agers obtain abortions). And the birthrate for 10-to-14-year-old girls doubled.

The place to try to stem the tide and encourage abstinence is at the junior high level, where 80% of the students are not yet sexually active.

Schools in Atlanta, where ENABL was developed, report that teens who took the curriculum were three times more likely to postpone having sex than those who didn’t take part in the program. That also means that they were less likely to drop out of school, deliver children with medical problems and become social-service drains on the community for years.

And that doesn’t include the incalculable costs of shattered young lives. The ENABL curriculum is needed in Orange County.