Abstinence-only policies are costly and inaccurate.  Now, we can add another reason why they are bad policy.  They simply do not work.

Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found.

More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to the study released last week.

I know this is rather obvious thinking, but if the religious right is genuinely interested in preventing abortions, they would be leading the charge in proper, effective, and comprehensive sex education — which includes contraception. 

But their agenda is not about life (or even health) of a woman and/or potential children, as much as it is about forced imposition of virtue on women:

"Sexual union in marriage ought to be a complete giving of each spouse to the other, and when fertility (or potential fertility) is deliberately excluded from that giving I am convinced that something valuable is lost. A husband will sometimes begin to see his wife as an object of sexual pleasure who should always be available for gratification."

Those are the words of Dr. Joseph B. Stanford, who was appointed by President Bush in 2002 to the F.D.A.’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee.  The elitist paternalism behind his remarks (not to mention his absurd notion that contraception will lead to a husband’s disrespect for his wife) speaks for itself.

And you wonder why there’s no morning-after pill?