When President-elect Barack Obama and his economic team begin a line-by-line review of the federal budget in their search for spending cuts, they can begin with the $176 million spent annually on sexual abstinence-only programs aimed at teenagers.

For reasons that have more to do with pleasing its conservative religious base than operating in the real world, the Bush administration has showered more than $1.5 billion on abstinence-only education programs.

A study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health comparing the behavior of teenagers who took "virginity pledges" and those who didn't confirms what human nature and common sense have suggested all along -- abstinence pledges don't work.

The Johns Hopkins study confirms that teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to engage in premarital sex as those who don't take the pledge. The difference between the two groups is that those who took the pledge were 10 percent less likely to use condoms or other forms of birth control during sex. Because of this, pledgers also were less likely to protect themselves or their partners from sexually transmitted diseases.

For many parents, the sexual awakening of their children is an uncomfortable notion, but it is a reality of life that doesn't respond well to will power, pledges or wishful thinking.

Young people are sexual beings, but they're not necessarily informed about how to avoid being exploited or harmed by a host of human urges. Education about the mechanics and responsibilities that come with sexual activity -- including knowledge of contraceptives -- is more realistic than relying merely on pledges to abstain from sex until marriage.

Even those who make the pledge should have enough information and resources to deal with the inevitable urge to break it. There's no shame in knowing more than you want to know.

First Published: January 4, 2009, 5:00 a.m.