What Andrea Krakovsky remembers most about her first time is the panic attack that followed. She was 17*, lying in bed with her 20-year-old boyfriend—a restaurant cook she’d met through friends—in the basement of his parents’ house. After weeks of discussion, they’d finally had sex.

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It was a brief and, for Andrea, painful experience. Instead of feeling newly grown-up or flush with tender emotions, she started to hyperventilate. Slipping outside, she clutched a porch railing as she fought the urge to throw up. She and her boyfriend had used a condom, but she was consumed with fear that she’d just gotten pregnant or contracted a sexually transmitted infection. Or wasted her virginity.

“I was taught that virginity was this huge, important thing that you give away to your soul mate,” says Andrea. In ninth-grade sex ed, she’d been told to wrap her chastity in a box for her future husband. Back then, Andrea brushed this off as ridiculous; she and her friends had already experimented with oral sex. But now the words echoed in her brain. What if she and her boyfriend broke up? “I thought,” recalls Andrea, now 26, “I guess I’ll be damaged forever.”

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Andrea didn't go to a religious school. She grew up in Gwinnett County, Georgia, home to a cluster of Atlanta suburbs and one of the nation’s largest public education systems. There, beginning in her freshman year at Brookwood High, she learned about “the birds and the bees” in health classes taught by teachers, football coaches, and speakers linked to a local anti-abortion organization.* They all used an “abstinence centered” curriculum called Choosing the Best (CTB).

CTB’s message was and is simple: Everyone should wait until they’re married to have sex because “safe sex” isn’t really safe. As a teen, Andrea learned about the failure rate of condoms but not how to use one. She was shown stomach-turning slides of untreated genital warts but not advised how to reduce her odds of getting them, beyond staying abstinent. Sex in any context outside marriage was portrayed as unhealthy or dangerous. Intimate pleasure wasn’t mentioned at all (CTB officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment).

"What will your vows be like? Who will be in your wedding party?" —REAL Essentials, 2018 The Voorhes

Like Andrea, most teens taught this stuff will ignore it—95 percent of Americans have premarital intercourse, per the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that advances sexual and reproductive health. Abstinence-only lessons don’t even do much to delay sex, according to a nearly universal research consensus, which is why groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend a more comprehensive approach (i.e., teaching abstinence alongside birth control, STI prevention, and healthy relationships). A “just wait” message may actually make young people more likely to engage in risky behaviors when they do have sex, since they are never told how to avoid pregnancy or STIs.

The drawbacks aren’t just physical. “Abstinence-only can leave kids, especially girls, with a lasting sense of shame around their sexuality,” says Nora Gelperin, director of sexuality education and training at Advocates for Youth (AFY), which promotes comprehensive sex ed. This can affect their equality, both in and out of the bedroom. “Young women may disconnect from their sexual selves as they get older,” says Gelperin. “They may not feel they have a right to pleasure or that they can assert themselves in relationships.”

And yet, abstinence-focused education is currently taught all over the country, courtesy of...you. Yep: It’s paid for by your local, state, and federal taxes, with little oversight. (States and districts that fund their own sex ed still look to Washington for cues on what programs to teach.)

While ab-only lessons have been financed by the government since the 1980s, President Obama worked to slash their budget from a George W. Bush–era peak of $176 million to $50 million while giving more cash to comprehensive programs proven to prevent teen pregnancy. (Congress blocked him from scrubbing ab-only altogether and in 2015 hiked funding back to $90 million.) Under Trump, funds have increased to $100 million—but the president requested a whopping $277 million in his 2018 budget, clearly revealing his priorities. This, despite 66 percent of parents supporting sex ed that includes birth control.

The takeaway from abstinence-only sex ed classes: Just don’t do it. The Voorhes

On the ground, this means more ab-based teachings in more schools. CTB is already taught with federal money in 15 states by 59 school districts and organizations (and in countless other places using state funds). That makes the curriculum Andrea found so traumatic the top federally funded program of its kind in America, according to data exclusively gathered by Cosmopolitan. At the same time, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has tried to yank money from Obama’s remaining programs. “The intention within the administration is clearly to reinvigorate abstinence-only until marriage,” confirms Jesseca Boyer, a senior policy manager at Guttmacher.

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What’s more, officials have signaled a preference for curricula like CTB that stoke fear about premarital sex versus those that stress abstinence as a temporary health choice. Meaning that the most potentially harmful curricula may see their influence grow at a time when STI rates are skyrocketing among young people* and the #MeToo movement is proving that many Americans lack basic awareness of issues surrounding sexual consent and gender power dynamics. (A spokesperson for the division of HHS that awards abstinence-focused cash says that new periodic reviews of these curricula look for “unintended consequences like trauma or ostracism” and may require programs to come up with “corrective action plans.”)

For her part, Andrea suffered years of panic attacks and anxiety after sex. “Every itch, every bump, every discharge—it all seemed like it must be an STI,” she says. She became convinced she was a pervert for being attracted to both men and women, since sexual orientation wasn’t covered in CTB. Persuaded that sex was bad and wrong, she waited until she was 19 to ask her doctor about birth control. “Sex was stressful. It wasn’t enjoyable,” she says. “Shame is a really hard lesson to unlearn.

In 2014, a guest speaker showed up in Sarah Badwan’s ninth-grade health class outside St. Louis. She invited five volunteers to the front of the room and handed each a single cheese cracker, telling them to chew, then spit it into cups of water. Then she poured the first person’s sludge into the second one’s cup, the second one’s into the third’s, and so on, until the fifth kid’s drink was a mess of orange saliva. “She said, ‘Do you see how gross that is because everyone poured their stuff in there?’” recalls Sarah. “‘This is what happens when you have sex with multiple people.’”

"It's saying, essentially, that people with STIs are chewed-up garbage." —Elizabeth Schroeder The Voores

The kids didn’t know that the speaker was from a crisis pregnancy center, or CPC. They did know the exercise was shocking, says Sarah. She had already learned about abstinence from her mom and continues to believe it’s a smart choice. “But it makes me feel physically sick to think of how [the teacher] taught it,” says Sarah, now 18. “Like, I’m scared to have sex because I don’t want someone’s previous partner’s fluids inside me.”

Versions of this lesson still appear in curricula supported by the federal government. YES You Can!—taught in hundreds of schools throughout New Jersey, among other states—was one of six new programs funded in 2017 by the Trump administration. In it, three mouthfuls of chips end up in one person’s water; each represents a different STI. “Some of these diseases can impact a person both physically and emotionally for the rest of their lives,” a teacher says. “Can [they] also impact a future relationship?”

The implication is clear, says Elizabeth Schroeder, a sexuality-education expert who develops comprehensive curricula. “It’s saying, essentially, that people with STIs are chewed-up garbage.” (Peggy Cowan, founder and president of the group behind YES You Can!, counters, “We are simply talking about risk. An educator who sees anything but prevention is seeing something that isn’t there.”)

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Previous ab-only curricula were criticized for distorting medical information. But after facing bad press in the Bush years, they rebranded. Many now call themselves sexual-risk-avoidance programs. Others removed sections that denigrated LGBTQ students or corrected falsehoods. (One exception: YES You Can! still claims that “for preventing pregnancy, condoms are about 85 percent effective when used correctly all the time.” In actuality, condom efficacy rises to 98 percent when they’re always used perfectly.) Some programs now refute that they’re shame- or fear-based. “It is vital that students be given complete information about the significant health risks associated with STDs, along with the benefits and limitations of condoms... in the context of presenting delaying sex as the healthiest choice, consistent with medical fact,” states CTB’s website.

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But the cracker activity shows how modern ab-only programs can still harm and stigmatize students. “This kind of message is not going to encourage kids to get tested or feel positive about getting treatment if they need it,” says Schroeder. Nor does it help them reduce their risk of getting STIs: None of the curricula Cosmopolitan obtained include demos on how to use condoms.*

"No one talks to you about vaginal health. I didn't know, Do I clean it? Do I douche?" —Andrea The Voorhes

Indeed, three of the top eight federally-funded curricula make contraception seem like an ineffective, dangerous choice, according to data gathered by Cosmopolitan. Condoms’ “normal use” failure rate—18 percent, per the CDC—is presented as intolerable, even disqualifying. In REAL Essentials, now taught with $3.7 million of federal money in states such as Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Michigan, “properly using a male condom” is listed as an “at risk” behavior for contracting HIV/AIDS. Compounding the fear are photos of untreated late-stage STIs, which pop up in CTB, YES You Can!, and others. A blooming patch of genital warts or bloody cervix implies that the worst possible STI outcomes are the likeliest. Amid all this, teens might be forgiven for concluding that they can’t actually avoid risks if they are going to have sex, so why bother trying? “When you tell people that condoms don’t work, they have sex without them,” says Andrea.

Some researchers say these teachings are unethical by any name. “[The new curricula] are a politically sellable way of presenting the same old ideas,” says John Santelli, MD, a professor of Population and Family Health and Pediatrics at Columbia University. A 2017 review he coauthored found that ab-only programs “threaten fundamental human rights” by failing to help people protect their health. “It’s unrealistic to expect that a 16-year-old will stay abstinent until she gets married at 26,” he says. “We have an obligation to acknowledge reality and give people information about how to make good sexual decisions.”



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Alarmingly, the Trump administration’s abstinence shift comes at a time when fewer students are getting any sexual education at all: The number of kids receiving formal instruction about birth control and STIs has declined significantly since 2006. With little state or federal regulation in place (only 24 states and D.C. even require sex ed), school districts can choose which, if any, curricula to use. They may opt for ab-only because some parents object to comprehensive sex ed or because federal or state funding is available or because a CPC will come teach for free.

Proponents of abstinence education say giving teens info about contraception gives them permission to have sex. Trump-appointed HHS official Valerie Huber has written that it “normalizes” youth sexual behavior. (Ascend, the group Huber once headed, didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

Other abstinence advocates insist that their programs are backed by research. One study did find that students taught using Heritage Keepers—which gets federal cash in states such as South Carolina and Texas—were less likely to have had sex one year later. CTB also trumpets a study showing its short-term effectiveness—without mentioning that the impact lasted less than three months. (Only 17 percent of federally funded ab-only curricula appear on a government list of programs proven by at least one study to prevent teen pregnancy or STIs. HHS told Cosmopolitan that current legislation doesn’t require ab-only curricula to be on this list.)



In fact, studies have suggested that nonreligious students who sign “abstinence pledges”—versions of which appeared in three curricula Cosmopolitan examined—don’t actually wait until marriage and may end up having more sex partners than students who don’t make pledges. Whereas multiple studies have found that factual knowledge discourages risky behavior and can even cause kids to wait longer.

Perhaps because they’ve had little schooling on contraception, girls who sign and break pledges also have a higher risk for pregnancy outside marriage; ironic, since pregnancy is frequently presented in ab-focused classes as an unmitigated disaster. Relationship Smarts Plus, taught with $3.2 million of federal funding in 10 states, includes a three-page letter from a fetus named “Lily” to her teenage mother, scolding her for drinking and smoking (“Mom, what are you doing with our life?!”) and asking her to consider adoption. (In response to the notion that this may shame teen parents, the curriculum’s author, Marline Pearson, says the letter was written by a real teen mom and that focusing on potential harms to a child taps young people’s “protective” instincts, spurring behavioral changes.)

Some curricula veer into overt anti-abortion messaging. Heritage Keepers tells students that “a baby’s heart begins beating just three weeks after conception,” while YES You Can! offers several pages of vivid 3-D sonogram images. Says Dr. Santelli: “We’re talking about an ideology or a belief system dressed up as science.”

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The curricula that Cosmopolitan reviewed often present subjective opinions or misinformation as settled fact, teaching that sex belongs within marriage, life begins at conception, premarital sex results in depression or causes women to bond permanently with their partners, and that, according to Heritage Keepers, premarital cohabitation leads to infidelity and domestic violence.*

Intense focus on marriage as a life goal may be stigmatizing to young parents and kids with single parents of their own. In Heritage Keepers, sex is compared to fire, with marriage the fireplace that keeps it safe (Heritage Keepers declined to comment for this story).

Teachings from actual abstinence-only lessons, all of which are paid for, in part, by your tax dollars. The Voorhes

REAL Essentials includes several pages asking teenagers to imagine “the wedding of my dreams.” Teachers stage mock nuptials, with students playing the part of the couple, wedding party, and photographer. (Lauren Reitsema, a spokesperson for REAL Essentials’ publisher, says this emphasizes that “marriage is a great option,” not the only option. Yet cohabitation is unfavorably compared to marriage throughout the program). Until last year, these classroom unions were decidedly heterosexual. A new version of the curriculum is more gender neutral. Still, LGBTQ students were almost entirely absent from the most popular programs. A few mentioned them in passing, but zero included sections on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“To isolate [LGBTQ students] is actually less inclusive than including them in what we teach all students,” says Reitsema. But Jennifer Driver, the state policy director for SIECUS, a group that promotes comprehensive sex ed, says that not addressing LGBTQ issues at all can exacerbate those teens’ higher risk for STIs, pregnancy, and sexual violence.

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REAL Essentials and others also emphasize the controversial philosophy of success sequencing, which holds that graduating from school, working full-time, getting married, and having kids—in that order—keeps people out of poverty. Many researchers dispute this, saying that it ignores the systemic forces driving poverty. And that teaching success sequencing without teaching contraception—as REAL Essentials does—sets students up for disappointment and failure. “You’re telling them that the only way to be successful is to delay having children until they’re married,” says sociologist Philip Cohen, PhD, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies social inequality, “but not giving them information on how to do that.”*

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Sarah Bess Jones Zigler, 25, says she’ll never forget the scorching waves of guilt that coursed through her body when a teacher asked her eighth-grade class to sign abstinence pledges. Like Andrea, she grew up in Gwinnett County, where beginning at age 12 she was simultaneously sexually abused by a friend’s older brother and taught that sex must be saved for marriage. This left Sarah Bess convinced that the assaults were her fault. “I felt like I had tempted this boy because my body was too sexual, and now I had no chance of being pure again,” she says. (A recent Guttmacher analysis suggests that 15 percent of high school girls have experienced sexual violence in the past year.)

Meanwhile, several prominent ab-based curricula use outdated gender stereotypes to place sexual responsibility at women’s feet. “These programs are full of victim-blaming messages that say, essentially, ‘If it happened, you probably didn’t say no loudly enough,’” says Laura Lindberg, PhD, a principal research scientist at Guttmacher.

Heritage Keepers suggests girls are responsible for controlling boys’ urges by telling female students to “choose your clothes, expressions, and gestures carefully” and to make sure “the messages you send match your values.” According to CTB, “competency” and “self-sufficiency” are men’s “primary emotional needs,” while “being together” and “quality of relationship” are women’s. Several curricula suggest that women are sexually passive and harder to arouse. “Boys are allowed to have a libido,” says David Wiley, PhD, a sex-education researcher in Texas. “And it’s up to girls to keep those rapacious boys in check.”

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The fallout from these messages can extend far beyond graduation, perpetuating the unequal power dynamics that have been shown to increase women’s likelihood of coercive sexual experiences, even assault.* Meaning, with its renewed focus on abstinence, the government could literally be putting a new generation of women in harm’s way.

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In interview after interview, young women told Cosmopolitan about the lingering effects of ab-only sex ed. Some who were sexually abused wondered what they’d done to invite the attack; some felt deeply anxious about sex into their 20s; many ignored their own pleasure, convinced that sexual feelings were dirty. Alexis Suh, 25, another Gwinnett County grad, recalls being pressured into having painful anal sex at age 15. “I didn’t know I could say no,” she says. “Consent wasn’t a concept taught to me. I just knew I didn’t want to get pregnant, but I wanted my boyfriend to like me.”

“When girls are taught that women are supposed to be passive—and that their job is to appease or control men rather than stand up for their own sexual desires—it makes them vulnerable to a whole bunch of things that are not good for their sexual health,” confirms Amy Schalet, PhD, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. These teachings may even normalize aggressive behavior in boys, liberating them “to relinquish responsibility for their own bodies and actions,” says Schalet.

Across the country, students are fighting back. Earlier this year in suburban Philadelphia, a young woman named Abigail McElroy successfully campaigned to eject a CPC from her school after she was taught that girls who have had sex are like tape that has lost its stickiness. Aly Burmeister, 18, from upstate New York, secretly recorded a school presentation in which a CPC speaker gave one boy a stick of gum that another had already chewed, explaining that the gum represented virginity. “It was degrading— this was about a girl having to save her virginity, but there was nothing about the guys’ virginity,” says Aly. (Her mom, Gina Tonello, got the CPC kicked out of the school district, although it still teaches elsewhere in the area.)

Girls are taught they’ll be like chewed-up gum if they lose their virginity. The Voorhes

Whether a groundswell of sex-ed advocacy can compete with millions of new Trump abstinence dollars remains to be seen. Some schools may be resistant to change, says Gelperin. “It requires resources and energy, and they may be concerned about being perceived as promoting sexuality.”



“We shouldn’t just focus on the risks of sex,” says Lindberg about the path ahead. “The purpose of sex education isn’t just to prevent pregnancy and STIs. It should be about healthy development: communication, body image, self-esteem, consent, and pleasure. Young people should understand that they have a right to their own sexual pleasure.” Adds Gelperin, of AFY: “We have the opportunity to raise a generation that will do better by each other.”

In the meantime, many American youth will continue learning moralistic or incomplete lessons about a natural and essential part of their development, with implications for their health, safety, and relationships.

Back in Gwinnett County, Andrea has started working with the activist group Gwinnett Citizens for Comprehensive Sex Education. A rep for the school district told Cosmopolitan that it plans to review its relationship with CPC-affiliated teachers this fall, for the first time in five years. The spokesperson added that last year, district officials reviewed Choosing the Best, the curriculum Andrea was taught. They decided to keep it.

READ MORE 7 Dangerous Sex Ed Myths READ The Sex Ed Crisis READ Sex Ed Books You Need READ





How We Did It

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Last spring, Cosmopolitan launched an investigation to find out what exactly public school students are learning in abstinence- focused programs, which the Trump administration actively supports. To our knowledge, our project is the first comprehensive analysis of the scope, content, and fallout of such federally funded curricula since 2004, when a similar report was issued by California congressman Henry Waxman.



We first tracked the $90 million in federal dollars allotted for abstinence-only or “sexual risk avoidance” education programs in 2017 (detailed 2018 info was not available at press time) and followed that cash to 329 agencies and organizations in 37 states. Figuring out who got what and which curricula they used took hundreds of calls and e-mails to state officials.

We crunched all existing numbers to ID the most popular federally funded abstinence-focused programs in America. Then we got a hold of the curricula themselves with the help of former students and advocacy groups. We also bought some lesson plans and received courtesy copies from publishers.

Next, we reviewed versions of the top eight programs being paid for by the federal government. We also obtained editions of five others, including two recommended by Ascend, a leading sexual-risk- avoidance group. Finally, we enlisted researchers and sexual-education experts to help us analyze each curriculum and assess its potential impact on teens and adults.

