The 1981 Adolescent Family Life Act, or AFLA, is a US federal law that provides federal funding to public and nonprofit private organizations to counsel adolescents to abstain from sex until marriage. AFLA was included under the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981, which the US Congress signed into law that same year. Through the AFLA, the US Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, funded a variety of sex education programs for adolescents to address the social and economic ramifications associated with pregnancy and childbirth among unmarried adolescents. AFLA received several criticisms for directly emphasizing and funding abstinence-only education programs from religious organizations. However, when US citizen Chan Kendrick brought the case Bowen v. Kendrick before the Supreme Court in 1988, the Court upheld that AFLA was constitutional. Although numerous evaluations have shown minimal scientific evidence supporting abstinence-only education, as of 2020, the federal government still provides funding for such programs through AFLA.
Details
- Adolescent Family Life Act (1981)
- Nott, Rohini (Author)
- Darby, Alexis (Editor)
- Arizona State University. School of Life Sciences. Center for Biology and Society. Embryo Project Encyclopedia. (Publisher)
- Arizona Board of Regents (Publisher)
- Sexual Abstinence
- Sexual abstinence--Religious aspects--Catholic Church
- Sexual abstinence--Religious aspects
- Sexual abstinence--Religious aspects--Christianity
- Church schools--Law and legislation--United States
- Church and state
- Freedom of religion
- Federal aid to maternal health services
- Federal aid to community health services
- Public health laws
- Health services accessibility--Law and legislation
- School health services--Law and legislation
- Family planning--Law and legislation
- Pregnancy in Adolescence
- Adolescent Pregnancy
- Pregnancy, Adolescent
- Pregnancy, Teenage
- Preteen Pregnancy
- Teen Pregnancy
- Teenage pregnancy
- Postpartum Abstinence
- Natural Family Planning Methods
- ethics
- Reproduction
- Concept
- Legal
- Outreach
- Adolescent Family Life Act
- Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981
- Title XX of the Public Health Service Act