True Love Waits: Abstinence Education in the USA

True Love Waits ¹ is part of the politicised, right-wing, American, evangelical Christian movement. Situated in this context, but ‘educating’ teenagers from other backgrounds in the USA, the UK and across the world, True Love Waits engages teenagers with variations on the theme of a series of workshops and activities, culminating the taking of the ‘pledge’ (whose text is a central focus of this chapter). This kind of ‘abstinence education’ is part of a larger conservative agenda in America, with money promised to American schools and aid to African countries on condition that abstinence programs rather than contraceptive advice are provided to children.²