A new study of 38,000 Americans has found that 95 percent had premarital sex, challenging the wisdom of the abstinence-only sex education programs favored by the Bush administration. According to the study’s author: “It would be more effective … to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active — which nearly everyone eventually will.”

The study also determined that engaging in premarital sex to be fairly consistent from the 1950s on, refuting the claim that people were simply less sexually active before marriage in the good old days.