Answer to Question 1
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Answer to Question 2
Abstinence campaigns encourage young people to take a virginity pledge and refrain from heterosexual intercourse until marriage. In some ways the campaigns appear to be successful the total percentage of high school students who say they've had heterosexual sex as well as teen pregnancy and abortion rates have dropped somewhat. However, the campaigns do not offset the other messages teenagers hear. Research shows that taking a virginity pledge does lead an average heterosexual teenager to delay his or her first sexual experience by about 18 months but the pledges are effective only for students up to age 17. By the time they are 20 years old, over 90 percent of both boys and girls are sexually active. The pledges were not effective at all if a significant proportion of students at the school was taking them, which could be due to creating a deviant subculture, i.e. a counterculture, or could be due to many of those taking the pledge to go along with the crowd without really meaning it. Pledgers who have heterosexual intercourse are far less likely to use contraception. Research also shows that half of pledgers broke their pledge before graduating from college. Studies showed that few people really know exactly what counts in keeping a pledge. Abstinence-based programs are often used instead of actual sex education. A study found abstinence-only programs had no impact on teen sexual activity or rates of unprotected sex. Another study found that those who received abstinence-only education were more likely to report a pregnancy than those who received comprehensive sex education, which includes information about birth control. While abstinence-only sex education has little or no effect on reducing rates of abortion, unwanted pregnancy, or sexually transmitted diseases, comprehensive sex education lowers all three rates. Globally, those countries with the most comprehensive sex education have far lower rates of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.