On August 21, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) released the State Profiles for Fiscal Year 2007.  The most comprehensive resource of its kind, the State Profiles include individual profiles of every state and the District of Columbia that are intended to serve as a guide and major resource for advocates, policy-makers, and other interested parties.  This fifth edition includes information from federal Fiscal Year 2007, which began on Oct. 1, 2006 and ended on Sept. 30, 2007, and tracks approximately $176 million in federal funding to abstinence-only-until-marriage grantees.

The State Profiles were compiled through extensive research, monitoring, and tracking of state and local developments around comprehensive sexuality education; conversations with state health officials and state advocates; and the solicitation of state records on federal abstinence-only-until-marriage grantees.  Our analysis for this edition looks at trends in the movement towards comprehensive sexuality education and, similarly, developments in the abstinence-only-until-marriage movement.

Highlights and trends from this edition of the State Profiles include:

·         As of September 2008, 25 states will no longer be participating in the Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage program.  This totals nearly $23 million in unspent monies. 

·         Health data released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the last year reveal one in four teenage girls are infected with an STD and nearly half of all African American teenage girls are infected.

·         Other data from the biannually released Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System show little change in important health behaviors.  This data show disparities in sexual health behaviors among race, ethnicity and geographic location.

·         Texas received the highest amount of funding: $18,213,472.

·         Four states received no abstinence-only-until-marriage funding: Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, and Vermont.  This is the first time since 1998 that any individual state has no federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funding coming into its jurisdiction.

·         The majority of abstinence-only-until-marriage funding is concentrated in southern states; these 17 states received nearly half of all allocated funding ($84.6 million).

·         Kentucky and Illinois distribute the greatest amount of funding to anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs).

·         CPCs receive abstinence-only-until-marriage funds in 23 states, totaling  nearly $14 million in abstinence-only-until-marriage funds distributed from the Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage and CBAE funding streams.

The State Profiles are available now at www.siecus.org. Print copies will also be available. 

For more information on expanding or developing state and local advocacy efforts around comprehensive sexuality education, or to obtain a hard copy of the profiles, please contact Catherine Morrison, State Policy Coordinator, at cmorrison@siecus.org or (202) 265-2405.