bring more money

The Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) was quietly signed into law in 1981 as Title XX of the Public Health Service Act without hearings or floor votes in the U.S. Congress. In addition to providing support for pregnant and parenting teens, AFLA was established to promote “chastity” and “self-discipline.” The program has always had a pregnancy-prevention component aimed at discouraging premarital sexual behavior among teens. Since Fiscal Year 1997, however, funds within AFLA were explicitly tied to the more stringent eight-point definition of “abstinence education” found in Title V and, therefore, to a stricter interpretation of what must be taught. Since its inception, AFLA has received more than $125 million. For Fiscal Year 2008, President Bush has proposed maintaining AFLA’s funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs at $13 million. Under Title V, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services allocates $50 million in federal funds each year to the states. States that choose to accept these funds must match every four federal dollars with three state-raised dollars and are then responsible for using the funds or distributing them to community-based organizations, schools, county and state health departments, media campaigns, or other entities. Every state, with the exception of California, has at one time accepted Title V funds. Currently, nine states do not take this money, including California, Maine, and New Jersey. With the passage of Title V also came an eight-point federal definition of “abstinence education.” All programs that receive abstinence-only-until-marriage funds must adhere to this definition which specifies, in part, that “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of all human sexual activity” and that “sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.” Because the first element requires that Title V-funded programs have as their “exclusive purpose” promoting abstinence outside of marriage, programs may not in any way advocate contraceptive use or discuss contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates.