Supporters of abstinence-only education said it should remain an option. “We’ve seen a lot of attacks on this program,” said Leslee Unruh, the president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, based in South Dakota. “A lot of kids that are abstaining are made to feel as if they are from a Victorian age and they are not with the ‘Sex and the City’ crowd.”

Dr. Daines’s announcement came the same day that the New York Civil Liberties Union, which opposes abstinence-only education, released a report detailing the number of such programs in the state. The report stated that roughly half of the groups teaching abstinence in the state were religious groups and that the state had done almost nothing to monitor them.

Dr. Daines said that existing state programs include discussion of abstinence. But he said the state made the decision based on evidence that the abstinence-only program did little to prevent teen pregnancies. He said he also objected to the program’s “narrow ideological view, which is not the direction we want to go in for sexual health.” He said the state should encourage the teaching of the use of condoms and include discussions of abstinence.

Congress is expected to take up funding for abstinence-only education at the end of the month. California, Connecticut, New Jersey and Rhode Island are among the states that have rejected such money.

According to the civil liberties union report, New York was second only to Texas in the amount of money it received for abstinence education. The federal government also gives roughly $6 million directly to community groups in New York for such programs, according to the report.