The National Abstinence Education Association is launching a new nationwide campaign hoping to enlist 1 million parents to support abstinence education in U.S. schools, the Washington Post reports (washingtonpost.com, 6/1).

The Washington, DC-based group is sending e-mails to supporters and parents, the Post reports, in an attempt to get them to join the campaign and lobby school officials to adopt abstinence-based sex-education programs and reject more comprehensive programs.

“Parents are being misled,” said the group’s executive director, Valerie Huber. “They are told the content of the curricula in their children’s classrooms stress abstinence and just have information to make decisions in case they become sexually active. , But most of these programs provide explicit how-to information that give teens a green light for activities that put them at risk.”

Comprehensive sex education supporters say the abstinence campaign is misleading, noting that programs that teach both safe sexual practices and abstinence have been shown to reduce the spread of HIV.