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Washington – U.S. House Democrats have said they are planning to allow he Title V abstinence education funding to expire in June, according to media reports Monday.

The democrats argue that there has been little progression made by the program and that the money should be used on more varied programs which have a higher potential to offer stronger results for sex education.

Conservatives believe that the funding cut is an attempt to to abolish abstinence altogether.

Studies have shown that abstinence-only sex educatioin has failed for the most part since it began.  Howerver,  the funding for the programe  is only a fraction of the total funding for different types of sex education across the U.S.. Therefore there is only so much more money to go around with this ruling

Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which considers the funding, cited the Mathematica Policy Research study claming abstinence education doesn’t work.

However, more analysis of the study showed that it only tracked less than one percent of the 700 abstinence programs that receive federal funding.

“The four programs that Mathematica evaluated (beginning in 1999) have already been revised and improved, and they are by no means representative of abstinence education as a whole,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins told LifeNews.com.

Perkins also condemned the decision to cut the funding.

Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Program, said Title V provides “a public health message that offers risk-elimination for youth,” adding that the decision to stop its funding will cause supporters of the program to work harder to maintain it.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who supported Dingell’s decision, said, “With all we know about how to prevent teen pregnancy and reduce sexually transmitted diseases, it is high time to redirect the millions of federal dollars that we squander every year on abstinence-only education to programs that actually work” (AP/San Francisco Chronicle, 5/16).