While consistently pushing to marginalize and prohibit comprehensive sex-education in schools throughout the United States, Focus on the Family is now hoping to introduce flawed abstinence-only programs in China. William Wan writes in the Washington Post that Focus on the Family is gaining a significant foothold in the country:

In Yunnan schools this year, teachers are being trained with a sex education curriculum created by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family. The agreement with the Yunnan ministry of education is a milestone for Focus on the Family, which has struggled for four years to make inroads on abstinence in China.

But China isn’t the only country that has been the subject of Focus on the Family’s efforts:

In the past decade, Focus on the Family has found relative success with its abstinence program in other countries – notably majority Muslim nations such as Egypt and Malaysia, where its Christian brand of abstinence coincides with the teachings of Islam.

Worldwide, the group says it has reached nearly 3 million teens. Despite Focus on the Family’s new push to bring abstinence-only until marriage programs into schools across the world, abstinence-only education in the US has been an abysmal failure. A congressional report from Representative Henry Waxman found that abstinence-only programs frequently employ misleading and erroneous information about human health and contraceptives. Moreover, studies show that signers of the virginity pledge, “the hallmark of the Christian group’s abstinence program,” tend to engage in sex before marriage at the same rate of those who do not sign a virginity pledge, while pledge-takers are less likely to use contraceptives or seek testing for sexually transmitted diseases. “No abstinence-only program has yet been proven through rigorous evaluation to help youth delay sex for a significant period of time, help youth decrease their number of sex partners, or reduce STI or pregnancy rates among teens,” writes Advocates for Youth. With Focus pushing unsuccessful abstinence-only curriculums abroad, Americans should be wondering why our federal government still provides $50 million to promote the fundamentally flawed and ineffective programs.