>We can either get up on a stump and beat our chests about ideology or actually try to address the problem of teen pregnancy and STDs. No one is going to stop them from doing it, that's for sure.

Any abstinence policy would only make the problem invisible, it wouldn't make it vanish. And the abstinence policy proponents are probably the supreme experts on solving invisible problems.

People will have sex as soon as they can, period (or rather, when no period). They are wired so. It makes more sense to help them do so safely, knowing what they're doing and what's going on with them, than to have them do it in hiding, in ignorance and at risk.