WASHINGTON, D.C. – Abstinence-based sex education is gaining more respect in the halls of Congress.

And that respect is coming in the form of increased federal funding.

Last week the U.S. Senate approved what’s being referred to as the Medicare Overhaul bill, which includes funding for various types of sex education in K-12 schools across the U.S., according to the Washington Times.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

The legislation provides $75 million for the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), which helps fund the type of “comprehensive” sex education favored by the Obama administration. That’s the same amount of funding that the program received last year.

But it also provides $75 million for the Title V Abstinence Education Program, which funds sex education courses that stress the wisdom of postponed sexual activity.

That’s $25 million more than the abstinence program received last year.

“We haven’t seen anything approaching equity in quite some time,” said Valerie Huber, president and CEO of the National Abstinence Education Association. “While we’re still overall a long way from equity, this is a good step in the right direction.”

Abstinence-based sex education has been a tough sell in the nation’s capital during the Obama years, according to Huber.

Title V was established by Congress in 1996, as part of the welfare reform package approved by Congress and President Clinton.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

“(Title V) provides information and skills to help young people decide to wait to have sex,” Huber said. “It was based on social science research that showed teens who graduate from high school, get a job, get married and then have children, in that order, only have a three percent chance of living in poverty as adults.”

Democrats in Congress allowed the program to lapse during the early years of the Obama administration, according to Huber. In its place they created PREP, which funds the type of instruction that treats teen sex as a social norm that should be addressed as an unavoidable reality.

Comprehensive sex ed programs often include information about abortion services and the distribution of condoms to students. Many critics of those programs say they tend to encourage sexual activity among teens.

“The policy priorities at the federal level were all for programs that normalize teen sex,” Huber said.

But Title V wasn’t dead for long, thanks to the efforts of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and a coalition of Congressional Republicans and some Democrats who saw value in abstinence-based instruction, Huber said. They brought it back after a short absence, although its annual federal funding was always less than the amount earmarked for PREP, Huber said.

This year’s Republican takeover of Congress gave abstinence-based sex education a more friendly legislative audience. GOP majorities in the House and Senate approved the $25 million funding increase, which is expected to be approved by President Obama.

“There was no guarantee that (Republicans) would include our program as part of negotiations, so they do deserve some appreciation,” Huber said. “The half million students who will receive crucial education and skills as a result of Title V have much to gain as a result of this.”

Obama’s approval of the funding increase for Title V doesn’t mean he’s a sudden convert to the value of abstinence-based instruction, Huber said.

“Every year he sends a budget to Congress that recommends elimination of all of our programs,” Huber said. “If this was a stand-alone bill he would have vetoed it. But it’s part of the Medicare fix that both Democrats and Republicans wanted to see. He knew it would be a real political mistake to veto it, even if he had to hold his nose.”

Huber said she appreciates the new equity in federal funding, even more than the actual increase in dollars for Title V.

“All we ask for is parity,” Huber said. “We didn’t care if they bumped PREP down to $50 million or moved Title V up to $75 million. We were less concerned about the actual amount as we were about having a level playing field.

“There are still other policies that put PREP at an advantage that couldn’t be addressed at this time. For instance, PREP grants (to states, which are passed on to schools) require no state match, while Title V has a 75 percent match that states have to come up with. You can imagine, in more impoverished states, how that can be a steep amount.”