As part of its 1996 welfare reform bill, the U.S. Congress enacted a $50 million per year program to fund abstinence education. The welfare reform law addresses the problem of births to single adolescents by enforcing child support payments, giving states financial incentives to reduce nonmarital births, and creating the abstinence education grant. The grant, administered under the Federal Maternal and Child Health program, mandates that programs give teens one unambiguous message: sex outside marriage is wrong and harmful to health. Every program funded by the provision must teach: (1) abstinence as the only certain way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and as the expected standard for students; (2) monogamous married relationships as the expected standard of human sexual activity; (3) self-sufficiency as essential before engaging in sexual activity; and (4) the ability to reject sexual advances and understand the dangers of alcohol and drugs. States may have flexibility in deciding how to administer the program, though they are obligated to be aggressive in creating programs. Regardless of how states distribute the abstinence education money, the funds can only be spent on activities meeting the definition of abstinence education within the Federal statute. Two appendixes provide: Provisions to Combat Rising Out-of-Wedlock Birth Rates, Welfare Reform Conference Report on H.R. 3734; and Legislative Language and Report Language for Abstinence Education Provision. (SM)