Supporters of sex-education programs that focus on teaching teens to abstain from sex until marriage and critics who want programs to include contraception and condom use are headed for a showdown as Congress ponders renewing an $87.5-million-a-year abstinence-only program set to expire June 30.

The debate sharpened with a congressionally mandated, $7.7 million study released Friday that found abstinence-only programs don't stop -- or even delay -- teen sex. Over the past decade, the federal government has spent about $1.5 billion on such efforts.

"They had no impact on the age of first sex. They had no impact on the number of partners. And they had no impact on reported rates of pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in a statement following the release of the report by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. of Princeton, N.J., for the U.S. Administration for Children and Families.

The study -- the first long-term look at whether abstinence education affects behavior as well as attitudes -- began tracking 2,057 youths in four communities around the country in late elementary and middle school and followed them for four to six years. The control group had one to three years of abstinence education.

"It's not a referendum on comprehensive sex education in comparison to abstinence, but it does suggest that we have some things to learn from the study," says Harry Wilson of the Health and Human Services Department.

The Title V block grant program, which expires in June, receives $50 million annually for abstinence programs and allows an additional $37.5 million to states for matching grants.

Supporters argue that the programs evaluated were first-generation approaches that didn't include ongoing abstinence messages now deemed necessary to delay teen sex.

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