Remember those awkward moments in middle school health class? When your gym teacher blushed as he explained how condoms work? And you wondered just how many light-years you’d have to travel to find a more embarrassing situation?

Well, 13-year-old students everywhere should be breathing a sigh of relief.

President Bush has taken it upon himself to alleviate those slightly uncomfortable moments in health classes across the country by promoting abstinence-only education.

Now that sex ed has officially been reduced to a time-saving “Don’t do it,” there’s a lot more time for after-school specials from the 1980s about the dangers of driving drunk.

But even if students do have more time for Helen Hunt and River Phoenix’s acting debuts, it turns out they’re missing something pretty important.

A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of declining birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers found that prevention programs should emphasize both abstinence and contraception.

In Minnesota, a study found sexual activity doubled among junior high school students taking part in an abstinence-only program.

Bush proposes to spend $270 million on abstinence-only education, an increase of $170 million from his election year plans.

He also proposes moving the program into the same agency within the Health and Human Services Department that oversees religious-based programs and his proposal to support marriage, according to CNN.

This isn’t “here’s how sex and contraceptives work, but you shouldn’t do it,” abstinence education.

This is a program that bars any discussion of birth control or condoms to prevent pregnancy or AIDS.

During the State of the Union speech, Bush said that 3 million teenagers a year contract sexually transmitted diseases “that can harm them, or kill them or prevent them from ever becoming parents.”

If he wants to prevent this, perhaps it would make more sense to teach sex education along with abstinence, just to cover all the bases.

“All of us parents, schools, government must work together to counter the negative influence of the culture and to send the right messages to our children,” Bush said in the State of the Union.

We couldn’t agree more.

Counteract the negative influences with education.

Send the right message to our children, that we care for them and respect their ability to make informed decisions.