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According to CDC’s Youth Risk Behavioral Survey (YRBS), many young people begin having sexual intercourse at early ages. 47% of high school students have had sexual intercourse, and 7.4% of them reported first sexual intercourse before age 13. Only 50% of those who are sexually active report consistent condom use. Research also shows that most young people in the world do not know how to protect themselves from HIV, nor do they know how it is transmitted.
This week Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) introduced YouCut, a new GOP initiative marketed as a "first-of-its-kind project...designed to defeat the permissive culture of runaway spending in Congress."
House Republicans are promising that YouCut will help to eliminate wasteful spending. However, in the case of one extremely wasteful and damaging ideological earmark — the massive $250 million that Congress pumped into failed Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage-programs earlier this year — GOP leaders (not to mention their colleagues across the aisle) have already looked the other way.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation believes comprehensive HIV/AIDS education needs to take place at correspondingly young ages, before young people engage in sexual behaviors that put them at risk for HIV infection.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
1. Please visit: http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/YourIdea.htm and submit the following message.
Dear Representative Cantor,
If you're serious about cutting unnecessary government spending, then I urge you to end ALL funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs immediately. These discredited programs have wasted more than $1.5 billion in federal funds so far.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
2. Please forward this information to everyone you know.
As advocates for sound HIV/AIDS policies and effective HIV prevention education, we need to use every public opportunity to tell our elected officials one important truth: ending abstinence-only-until-marriage-programs is a no-brainer.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
