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Three years after the passage of the Welfare Reform Act, Figueroa's workshop, held after class in public high schools, is one of a crop of just-say-no-to-sex programs springing up across the country. Through a little-noticed provision in the 1996 welfare law, almost $500 million of government money (a mix of federal and state) is now being used to bring such classes into public and private schools across the country. The funding has also afforded social conservatives the opportunity to present a variety of morality-laced activities in the curriculum.

Community groups in Nebraska, for instance, are using abstinence money for canoe trips, picnics and -- a real trick for a landlocked state -- an abstinence beach party. Held during a snowy week in February, the party involved motivational speakers, calypso music and a "beach" simulated by decorating a gym with sand, fake tropical birds and patio furniture.

In Ohio, a group that discourages women from having abortions has used its funding to train public school teachers about abstinence. One of the suggested lesson plans has students signing a pledge to remain celibate until marriage.

Find more information on sex education and the Sexual Health Center at drkoop.com

In Illinois, Kathleen Sullivan, a mother of 12 who runs that state's abstinence-only programs, put some of the state's funds toward a secondary virginity rally at which "educators" led kids in the chant: "Sex-free is the way to be!" And Arizona is using some abstinence money to target adults. The state has allocated $67,000 to the Arizona State University Community Health Services Clinic for the Healthy Relationships program, which encourages recovering alcoholics and drug addicts -- some of whom used to be prostitutes -- to remain free of romantic attachments during their recovery processes.

Back in New York, Figueroa, who works for a local nonprofit called the Bronx Perinatal Consortium, asks students to think about their goals -- and about how having premarital sex might interfere with them. She also has kids work on their own feelings of self-worth by passing around a mirror and asking each one to say two good things about themselves. "I like my hair and my ears," says a 16-year-old girl, wearing a miniskirt and platform sandals. The next girl likes "my hair and my teeth, even though my braces have pizza in them."

And what, asks Figueroa, might these feelings about themselves have to do with the decision to have sex? Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth has a ready answer: "You notice that the girls that have sex, or the people that have it, they're usually the ones with lower self-esteem, the ones that care about how they look on the outside," she says, pausing to flick her hair over her shoulder. "When in reality, what they're looking for is the feeling of acceptance."

Whether such game playing and pat positive-image talk will actually affect how these students think about sex, or when and how safely they have it, is an open question. Elizabeth, for instance, says that even before the workshop she had planned to remain abstinent, since having premarital sex may interfere with her plans to hold public office. "I could get pregnant, even if I use protection," she says. "Or I could get a disease, so I might not be around." Yet, after the workshop, even she -- who describes herself as coming from "a strict Latin family" -- says she would consider having sex with the right guy.

Indeed, no one knows what the effect of this giant experiment in sex education will be. Scientifically speaking, there is little reason to believe the almost 700 grants awarded for abstinence-only education so far will make even a dent in the teen-pregnancy or STD rates. A 1997 study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that analyzed the evaluation of more than two dozen non-government-funded abstinence-only education programs from 1985 to 1995 found that the vast majority had no effect on the timing or amount of sexual activity. And the largest study to date of an abstinence-only program found that the Education Now, Babies Later program, which involved 187,000 teens in California, had no impact on the age at which teenagers began to have sex.

According to the author of the California study, Douglas Kirby, the results don't mean that all abstinence programs are necessarily ineffective. "We just don't know whether any do work," he says. "The jury is still out."

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