Editor's Note: Adrienne Kimmell is a Member of the Healthy Teens Campaign and Executive Director of the Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates.

This week, The Healthy Teens Campaign of Florida and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) released a report on the explosion of failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs across the state of Florida with a particular emphasis on their presence in public schools. Titled, Sex Education in the Sunshine State: How Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Are Keeping Florida's Youth in the Dark, our research has exposed both the state's appalling indicators of poor outcomes for young people and the equally appalling nature of how abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have become pervasive throughout the state.

For starters, let's look at how Florida's youth are faring when it comes to some key indicators. The most recent data available shows Florida has the third highest rate in the nation of new AIDS diagnoses, the fifth highest rate of new HIV infections; teen pregnancy rates that are the sixth highest in the nation (and rose last year for the first time in 15 years); nearly two-thirds of all new sexually transmitted diseases in the state were among young people; and 15% of new HIV infections occurred among those under the age of 25. In sum, Florida has some of the worst health outcomes on these key indicators of reproductive and sexual health nationwide.

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