One week after highlighting medical inaccuracies in several abstinence-only print and online publications funded by the Bush Administration, the American Civil Liberties Union is now taking aim at an Oregon abstinence-only program, Stop and Think.

Sponsored by the Oregon-based Lane Pregnancy Support Center, the program has contracts requiring presenters and supervisors to “possess an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ; possess knowledge of the Word of God, and the ability to communicate it’s [sic] truth; exhibit a loving and merciful spirit; [and] attend a Bible believing local church or fellowship.”

"The Oregon program promotes one faith over others and as a recipient of federal abstinence-only funds that preference is not allowed in the United States Constitution," said Julie Sternberg, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project in an interview with Rewire.

“Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have been proven ineffective, medically inaccurate, and have a history of using taxpayer dollars to promote religion. It is time for the government to stop putting ideology above teens’ health,” said Sternberg.

"Our goal in each case is to end the federal funding of these abstinence-only programs. The government's own research indicated they don't work, they waste taxpayer dollars and they focus more on ideology than public health," Sternberg said.

Sternberg noted that once federal funds are stopped and these materials are officially recognized as being outside the law, that further action may be required by the states.

"If abstinence-only materials printed with federal funds find their way into public schools even after a successful ruling, then some state jurisdictions allow for further action to remove them. Other jurisdictions allow for what is known as 'recoupment,' forcing grantees who have misused public funds to pay them back to HHS," Sternberg said.

The ACLU has won similar cases in 2002 in Louisiana where a Federal Court ruled that public money cannot be used to promote religious beliefs, again in an abstinence-only program; and in 2006 in Massachusetts when an abstinence-only program called The Silver Ring Thing was determined to promote both religion and medical misinformation. The ACLU reached a settlement with HHS in the 2006 case.