We constantly hear from Planned Parenthood and other liberals that “everybody does it.” And since every teen is supposedly sexually active, the remedy is condoms.
Now a new study comes out to refute those tired lines. And guess what? The Center for Disease Control study reports that just 34.1 percent of U.S. high school students are sexually active. That’s a little short of “everybody.” This figure is down from 54 percent in 1991, which is about the time that abstinence education began gathering momentum.
The 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System study showed a 2-percent dropoff in the percentage of teens who said they used condoms while having sex. As students progress through high school, their condom use drops off — despite the heavy dose of condom education by Planned Parenthood.
Despite the falling rates of sexual activity, there is still too much early sexual activity. In Mississippi and Delaware, more than 60 percent of high school students have had sexual intercourse. The rates are over 50 percent in 14 other states.
The further students go through high school, the more likely they are to engage in sexual activity:
Ninth-graders: 20.1 percent
Tenth-graders: 30.6 percent
Eleventh-graders: 41.8 percent
Twelfth-graders: 52.6 percent
Nearly 15 percent of high school students have had sexual intercourse with four or more persons in their life.
The figure for students having sex for the first time before the age of 13 is 7.1 percent. Just 4.5 percent of high school seniors fit this category.
Sexual activity among Black and White students is declining, but there was no decline among Hispanic students.
One of the surprising findings of the study is that 29.1 percent of high school students in San Francisco have ever had sex. In contrast, 70 percent of students in Baltimore had engaged in sexual intercourse. Other major metro cities with high rates were Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.