"resident Bush's veto of Congress's main social spending bill has Democratic leaders looking for places to make trims to satisfy the president's sudden zeal for fiscal discipline. A small, but sensible, place to begin would be to eliminate the bill's $28 million increase for one of Mr. Bush's signature boondoggles — abstinence-only sex education.

Federal government spending on highly restrictive abstinence-only sex education has ballooned under President Bush, while evidence of the program's danger as a public health strategy has continued to mount.

Last April, a Congressionally mandated evaluation found that students who received abstinence instruction in elementary and middle school were just as likely to have sex in the following years as students who did not get such instruction.

States are catching on. Last month, Virginia became the 14th state to reject federal grant money for abstinence-only sex education to pursue the comprehensive approach supported by science and most Americans. That approach encourages abstinence but also arms young people with information about sexually transmitted diseases, contraceptives and pregnancy...."

(From Science, Sex and Savings, a Times editorial.)