By JENNIFER MEDINA

New York is rejecting millions of dollars in federal grants for abstinence-only sex education, the state health commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, announced yesterday. The decision puts New York in line with at least 10 other states that have decided to forgo the federal money in recent years.

New York has received roughly $3.5 million a year from the federal government for abstinence-only education since 1998. The abstinence program was approved as part of welfare overhauls under the Clinton administration and was expanded and restructured under President Bush.

In a statement posted on the Health Department's Web site, Dr. Daines said, "The Bush administration's abstinence-only program is an example of a failed national health care policy directive." He added that the policy was "based on ideology rather than on sound scientific-based evidence that must be the cornerstone of good public health care policy. " The state had also spent $2.6 million annually to fund the same programs over the last decade. That money will now be spent on other existing programs for sex education, Dr. Daines said in an interview.

Dr. Daines's announcement came the same day that the New York Civil Liberties Union, which opposes abstinence-only education, released a report detailing the number of such programs in the state. The report stated that roughly half of the groups teaching abstinence in the state were religious groups and that the state had done almost nothing to monitor them.

Dr. Daines said that existing state programs include discussion of abstinence. But he said the state made the decision based on evidence that the abstinence-only program did little to prevent teen pregnancies. He said he also objected to the program's "narrow ideological view, which is not the direction we want to go in for sexual health." He said the state should encourage the teaching of the use of condoms and include discussions of abstinence.

Congress is expected to take up funding for abstinence-only education at the end of the month. California, Connecticut, New Jersey and Rhode Island are among the states that have rejected such money.

"We think it is a good thing that they are making efforts to close programs that were misinforming adolescents," said Galen Sherwin, the director of the Reproduction Rights Project for the New York Civil Liberties Union, who wrote the report. "But there is still a long way to go before you get to comprehensive, medically sound sex education."

Both Dr. Daines and Ms. Sherwin cited recent studies, including one by the federal Government Accountability Office, which concluded that abstinence programs had not proven to be effective and had sometimes taught teens inaccurate medical information about sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

excerpted from:
"New York Just Says No to Abstinence Funding "
By JENNIFER MEDINA
© New York Times Sept. 21, 2007