High teen pregnancy rates are usually associated with lower levels of education and poverty. But new research conducted by Dr. Julie DeCesare of the University of Florida's OB-GYN residency program in Pensacola has shown that’s not all that’s going on. While national rates of teen pregnancy have fallen, they’ve fallen much less in Texas. DeCesare and her co-authors found that in the Dallas and San Antonio areas, teen pregnancy rates are 50 percent and 40 percent respectively above the national average.

Federal funding for abstinence-only programs began in 1982 with a small amount of money for the Adolescent Family Life Act. But with passage of welfare reform in 1996, these programs exploded despite a steady stream of evidence from studies showing they are ineffective and leave out information crucial to young people’s health. The feds have poured $1.5 billion into these failed programs over the past two decades.

Under an amendment to Title V of the Social Security Act, eight parameters for federally funded abstinence-only programs state their “exclusive purpose [must be] teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity” and that each must teach “that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of sexual activity.”

Numerous studies show this approach is a snare and delusion. Obviously, teens who don’t have sex don’t get pregnant. But abstinence-only programs don’t stop them from having sex or from getting pregnant. About half of teenagers nationwide say they have had sexual intercourse.

One approach does have a significant effect, according to numerous studies. Example: In 2008, Pamela Kohler and other researchers studied the National Survey of Family Growth on the impact of sex education on sexual risk-taking by young people ages 15-19. They found that teens who received comprehensive sex education were 50 percent less likely to become pregnant than those who received abstinence-only education. That doesn’t mean they aren’t having sex, just that a large percentage of them have taken to heart what they have learned from accurate education about it.

Given that every member of Congress who voted for the law and the funding that goes with it—and every legislator who voted to impose abstinence-only education in public schools—was once a teenager familiar with the call of the hormones, you would think that they would know better than to think this don’t-have-sex-until-you’re-married approach would actually work. And you would also think that they would understand that teaching abstinence-only without providing information about contraception would not reduce teenage pregnancy rates. Some of these politicians have wised up over the years.

Not in Texas, however.