Dear Secretary Leavitt:
We write on behalf of Human Rights Watch to express our concern regarding the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’) recently launched website, www.4parents.gov. Parents can play an important role in providing sexual health and HIV/AIDS information to their children, as HHS’ website acknowledges. HHS’ website, however, censors and distorts lifesaving information about sexual health and HIV prevention. The failure to provide complete, accurate, and unbiased sexual health and HIV/AIDS information not only undermines the potential for honest and open communication between parents and children about these issues. It also violates parents’ and children’s fundamental rights to information and health, and puts youth at needless risk of HIV infection and premature death. We urge you immediately to remove this website, and substitute in its place information that would address the needs of all youth.
Protecting the Human Right to Health
HHS’ website censors and distorts information about condoms, while misstating the efficacy of abstinence and ignoring the flaws of abstinence-only messages. The website states, for example, that condoms provide only “moderate protection” from HIV/AIDS, and suggests that it is easier to prevent a teenager’s first sexual experience than to increase contraceptive use. But according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), correct and consistent use of condoms is highly effective in preventing HIV transmission.
Moreover, the evidence is clear that comprehensive messages that include information about condoms and safer sex alongside abstinence messages can be effective in both delaying sex and in encouraging condom use among sexually active youth. There is, however, no reliable evidence supporting abstinence-only messages. Studies have consistently found that abstinence-only programs show no long-term success in delaying sex or reducing sexually risky behaviors, and may increase HIV risk by discouraging the use of contraception.
HHS’ website advises parents whose children are sexually active to tell them to stop, and teaches that the only safe sex is with an uninfected partner in a heterosexual marriage. The failure to teach about means of HIV prevention other than abstinence, coupled with information emphasizing the failure rates of condoms, needlessly puts many youth at risk of contracting HIV by encouraging many to forgo condom use. The message that safe sex is only possible within the context of marriage discriminates against lesbian and gay youth, who cannot legally marry in most of the United States, and denies them access to relevant, lifesaving health information. The website also fails to caution young people, especially young women, about their continued risk of HIV within marital relationships.
Young people have a right to know about all effective methods of HIV-prevention, and to be cautioned about the risk of contracting HIV, including in marriage. They have a right to seek and receive factual information about HIV prevention without bias or discrimination. The government, in turn, has an obligation to refrain from censoring, withholding or intentionally misrepresenting health-related information, including sexual education information.
We urge HHS to honor the United States government’s obligation to provide accurate and complete information about HIV/AIDS in the programs it supports. To this end, we request that HHS immediately take down the www.4parents.gov website, and substitute in its place complete, unbiased, and accurate information about HIV prevention. We would be interested in meeting with you to discuss efforts to ensure that revisions meet with prevailing human rights standards.
Sincerely,
/s/
Rebecca Schleifer, J.D., MPH
Researcher
HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program
