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Abstinence Facts
Abstinence Fact Sheet
How many high school students are abstinent?
Based on the 2001 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBS) data, over half (54.4%) of all students in grades 9-12 indicated that they had not had sexual intercourse.
Research shows that less than half of American high school students have had sex and more than half had not. Even among the students who were labeled as “being” sexually active, only two in five were presented sexually active. (www.freeteens.org)
How many teenagers are still virgins?
More than half of all teenagers are still virgins until the age of at least 17 years old. 61% of girls are still virgins and 55% of boys are still virgins. (The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Sex and America’s Teenagers, 1999)
By the age of twenty, 24% of girls and 20% of boys had not yet had sexual intercourse. (The Declines in Adolscent Pregnancy, Abortion and BIrth Rates in the 1990’s: What Factors are Responsible? www.freeteens.org, 1997)
Does abstinence have anything to do with the reduction in teen pregnancy?
Based on calculations by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, it appears that the increase in abstinence among women was responsible for the approximate one-quarter drop in the US teen pregnancy rate between 1995-1998. (Darroch, J.E. Sing, S. Why is Teen Pregnancy Declining? The Roles of Abstinence, Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use. Occassional Report No. 1, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1999)
During the 1990’s there was an 11% drop in the number of teens having sexual intercourse. This drop in activity lead to a drop in the US’s teen birth rate in every state, for every race. This study showed that this drop was a result of teens leaning towards a trend of sexual abstinence. (The Declines in Adolscent Pregnancy, Abortion and Birth Rtaes in the 1990’s).