Did you that New Mexico wants to encourage comprehensive sex education rather than abstinence-only?

In 2006, the United States Department of Health and Human Services decided that schools in New Mexico will lose federal funding for abstinence-only programs if they try and limit expenditures to programs for students in grades six and below.  New Mexico's Health Secretary, Michelle Lujan Grisham intends to challenge the decision. 

Last year, Grisham decided to use the $500,000 funds for younger students saying, "we want younger kids to be the heart of the program…we've got to get them before they're sexually active."  She acknowledges that New Mexico needs the federal money but that abstinence-only programs do not seem to reduce the rates of teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Associated Press, Feds: State Can't Limit Abstinence Education to Lower Grades, Santa Fe New Mexican, May 4, 2006 available at http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/43224.html (last visited Jan. 11, 2007).