Teen girls educated about different types of birth control and offered free access to every method available have drastically lower pregnancy and abortion rates compared to the national average for similarly sexually active teens, according to a study published Wednesday.

In the face of ongoing debate over whether sex education should be taught in U.S. schools — just 22 states plus the District of Columbia require public schools to teach it — the report may vindicate those who insist that arming teens with comprehensive information about birth control, safe sex and STDs is smart, not salacious.

In the study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis counseled more than 1,400 teen girls between the ages of 15 and 19 about various types of birth control and their effectiveness at preventing pregnancy. It was part of the university’s Contraceptive CHOICE Project, which recruited 10,000 St-Louis area women and teens that were deemed to be at high risk of unintended pregnancy.

During the study, researchers emphasized to the teens the effectiveness of long-acting, reversible contraceptives such as IUDs and hormonal implants, which are almost 100 percent effective at preventing pregnancy. Then, on the same day, the teens — a significant portion of whom had already had unintended pregnancies — were given the free birth control of their choice. They were also given free condoms to protect them from STDs.

The researchers, who say theirs is the first major study to educate women about all available types of contraceptives rather than focusing on one or two types — said they were surprised that 72 percent of the teens participating in the study selected IUDs or implants. On a national level, fewer than 5 percent of teens use those methods and instead favor birth control pills or condoms — which are less effective, particularly because they are often used incorrectly.

And when the researchers followed up with the teens every few months for the next two to three years, they found them far less likely to have gotten pregnant or had abortions than other sexually experienced teens. The average pregnancy rate among the teens involved in the study was 34 for every 1,000, versus the national average of 158.5 per 1,000 sexually active U.S. teens.

The average abortion rate was 9.4 per 1,000, while the average abortion rate among sexually active teens in the United States is 41.5 per 1,000.

Also, while the study cited data showing black teens on average get pregnant at nearly twice the rates that white teens do — at 253 versus 137 pregnancies per 1,000 women, respectively — that disparity all but disappeared among the study participants. There were 31.8 pregnancies per 1,000 among the black teens and 26.9 per 1,000 among the whites, according to the study.

“If we provide great contraceptive care and access to all of our teens in the U.S., this is what we could see,” said Gina Secura, lead author of the study and a senior epidemiologist with the Washington University School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

“We are still in a country where it just makes us skeevy to talk about sex, especially with young folks,” she added. “It’s a real bummer because we actually have a medical intervention that will work, and we just need to be better about talking about it.”