It's about religious liberty first, contraception second!

Federal challenge to religious liberty: Bishops speak out against violation of religious freedom

Of course Catholics believe that contraception, abortion and sterilization is wrong. But that's beside the point. Although we will be forced to fund these services- as preventative services- we need first to speak up about this violation of our First Amendment rights. It is secondary what we believe- the primary focus is that we are forced to give up what we believe.

Catholics can use this as an educational tool AFTER we make it clear that this "interim final rule" is unconstitutional.

Send a form letter to HHS by clicking here.
Send a form letter to your Congresspeople by clicking here.
Email Kathleen Sebelius- our Catholic head of HHS by clicking here.

Do it now- you have until Friday afternoon and then comments are closed!

UN Wants Billions for STD Vaccination Scheme

NEW YORK, May 5 (C-FAM) The UN is about to ask governments to fund the vaccination of every girl in the world against the sexually transmitted disease HPV, human papillomavirus. The controversial campaign could cost as much as $300 per person, totaling billions.

Dignitaries who launched the campaign at the UN in mid-April included a prominent African first lady, leaders from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the American Cancer Society, and the contraceptives manufacturer PATH.

UNFPA and PATH want donor nations to buy the vaccine at $14 per shot. Three shots are required over a period of six months, totaling $42, and the treatment is only good for five years. Seven treatments would be required to cover each woman’s reproductive lifetime.
Advocates warned the assembly that the idea would be contentious. Casting the campaign as an effort to eradicate cervical cancer rather than a massive vaccination program against a sexually transmitted disease will help steer clear of political resistance, they said.
One advocate advised the dignitaries that when they are asked why children should be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease, the UN should use the precedent of infant vaccinations against Hepatitis B.
When American local governments tried to mandate inoculation of school girls against HPV several years ago, popular outcry quashed the initiatives.
While none of the UN speakers addressed the issue, cervical cancer is caused by HPV infection, which is spread through sexual contact.  The panel lamented a dramatic increase in the cancer in the developing world, but were less clear on the reasons for its rise, sidestepping issues of sexual behavior and focusing instead on gaining political will to fund the vaccination program.
Of the half million new cases of cervical cancer each year, more than half of the patients die, usually because they did not know they had the disease until it had reached advanced stages.
UNFPA deputy executive director Purnima Mane said UNFPA would spearhead the campaign.  If approved by UN member states, UNFPA stands to receive a significant boost in funding, given the fact that there are billions of women and girls who would require the $42 treatment every five years.

The funding would reverse a decline in donations for international population programs, which have fallen from a high in 2008 due to the global economic downturn and plummeting global fertility rates. The Obama administration had to marginally cut UNFPA funding for 2011 during budget battles with U.S. lawmakers, but promised to increase it to $50 million in 2012. PATH likewise received $50 million, about a fifth of its funding, from the U.S. government in 2009.

Critics are concerned that the vaccination scheme will subsume the fight against cancer into the already well-funded reproductive rights agenda at the UN. They warn that because UNFPA aggressively promotes “sexual rights” for minors, the effort will not address sexual behavior or parental rights regarding medical decisions and could lead to an increase of the disease rather than its cure.

UN member states will deliberate the issue September 19th and 20th at the UN High Level Meeting on Non-communicable Diseases.

The Pope did not say condoms were OK!

Janet Smith explains it well. 

I won't do it justice- but from an NFP standpoint, all I can say is: if a homosexual (with or without AIDS) is having anal sex, isn't he already in grave sin? For that matter, is the condom even contraception?

If he had AIDS, what would make it worse would be infecting his partner. This would be a grave evil.

Another good explanation is here (my article)
and commentary from Lisa Graas.
And Jimmy Akin.
And Fr. Z.

A Killer Named Ella

Every NFP couple out there knows that they can potentially get pregnant on Friday from sex they had on Monday. They understand that sperm can survive for as long as five days in a fertile environment. They may have enjoyed their romantic encounter at home by candlelight, but the miracle of new life happened in the produce aisle while Mom was choosing potatoes.

Read the article--  http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=37847

Gardasil- what we knew all along!

Merck Researcher Admits: Gardasil Guards Against Almost Nothing
by Joan Robinson and Steven W. Mosher


On the morning of 2 October 2009, one of us (Joan) joined an audience of mostly health professionals and listened as Dr. Diane Harper, the leading international developer of the HPV vaccines, gave a sales pitch for Gardasil. Gardasil, as you may know, is the new vaccine that is supposed to confer protection against four strains of the sexually transmitted Human Papillomavirus (HPV).

Dr. Harper came to the 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination to prove to us the real benefits of Gardasil. Sadly, her own presentation left me (Joan) and others filled with doubts. By her own admission, Gardasil has the doctors surrounding me glaring at a poor promise of efficacy as a vaccine married to a high risk of life-threatening side effects.
Gardasil, Dr. Harper explained, is promoted by Merck, the pharmaceutical manufacturer, as a “safe and effective” prevention measure against cervical cancer. The theory behind the vaccine is that, as HPV may cause cervical cancer, conferring a greater immunity of some strains of HPV might reduce the incidence of this form of cancer. In pursuit of this goal, tens of millions of American girls have been vaccinated to date.

As I sat scribbling down Merck’s claims, I wondered why such mass vaccination campaigns were necessary. After all, as Dr. Harper explained, 70% of HPV infections resolve themselves without treatment in one year. After two years, this rate climbs to 90%. Of the remaining 10% of HPV infections, only half coincide with the development of cervical cancer.

Dr. Harper further undercut the case for mass vaccination campaigns in the U.S. when she pointed out that “4 out of 5 women with cervical cancer are in developing countries.” (Harper serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) for HPV vaccination in the developing world.) Indeed, she surprised her audience by stating that the incidence of cervical cancer in the U.S. is so low that “if we get the vaccine and continue PAP screening, we will not lower the rate of cervical cancer in the US.”

If this is the case, I thought, then why vaccinate at all? From the murmurs of the doctors in the audience, it was apparent that the same thought had occurred to them.

In the U.S. the cervical cancer rate is 8 per 100,000 women.1 Moreover, it is one of the most treatable forms of cancer. The current death rate from cervical cancer is between 1.6 to 3.7 deaths per 100,000 cases of the disease.2 The American Cancer Society (ACS) notes that “between 1955 and 1992, the cervical cancer death rate declined by 74%” and adds that “the death rate from cervical cancer continues to decline by nearly 4% each year.”3

At this point, I began to wriggle around in my seat, uncomfortably wondering, is the vaccine really effective? Using data from trials funded by Merck, Dr. Harper cheerfully continued to demolish the case for the vaccine that she was ostensibly there to promote. She informed us that “with the use of Gardasil, there will be no decrease in cervical cancer until at least 70% of the population is vaccinated, and in that case, the decrease will be very minimal. The highest amount of minimal decrease will appear in 60 years.”

It is hard to imagine a less compelling case for Gardasil. First of all, it is highly unlikely that 70% or more of the female population will continue to get routine Gardasil shots and boosters, along with annual PAP smears. And even if it did, according to Dr. Harper, “after 60 years, the vaccination will [only] have prevented 70% of incidences” of cervical cancer.

But rates of death from cervical cancer are already declining. Let’s do the math. If the 4% annual decline in cervical cancer death continues, in 60 years there will have been a 91.4% decline in cervical cancer death just from current cancer monitoring and treatment. Comparing this rate of decline to Gardasil’s projected “very minimal” reduction in the rate of cervical cancer of only 70 % of incidences in 60 years, it is hard to resist the conclusion that Gardasil does almost nothing for the health of American women.

Despite these dismal projections, Gardasil continues to be widely and aggressively promoted among pre-teen girls. The CDC reports that, by 1 June 2009, over 26 million doses of Gardasil have been distributed in the U.S.4 With hopes of soon tapping the adolescent male demographic, Merck, the pharmaceutical manufacturer of the vaccine, and certain Merck-funded U.S. medical organizations are targeting girls between the ages of 9 and 13.5 As CBS news reports, “Gardasil, launched in 2006 for girls and young women, quickly became one of Merck's top-selling vaccines, thanks to aggressive marketing and attempts to get states to require girls to get the vaccine as a requirement for school attendance.”6

Just as I began, in my own mind, to question ethics of mass vaccinations of prepubescent girls, Dr. Harper dropped another bombshell. “There have been no efficacy trials in girls under 15 years,” she told us.

Merck did study a small group of girls under 16 who had been vaccinated, but did not follow them long enough to conclude sufficient presence of effective HPV antibodies.

If I wasn’t skeptical enough already, I really started scratching my head when Dr. Harper explained, “if you vaccinate a child, she won’t keep immunity in puberty and you do nothing to prevent cervical cancer.” But it turned out that she wasn’t arguing for postponing Gardasil vaccination until later puberty, as I first thought. Rather, Dr. Harper only emphasized to the doctors in the audience the need for Gardasil booster shots, because it is still unknown how long the vaccine immunity lasts. More booster shots mean more money for Merck, obviously.

I left Dr. Harper’s lecture convinced that Gardasil did little to stop cervical cancer, and determined to answer another question that she had largely ducked: Is this vaccine safe?
Here’s what my research turned up. To date, 15,037 girls have officially reported adverse side effects from Gardasil to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). These adverse effects include Guilliane Barre, lupus, seizures, paralysis, blood clots, brain inflammation and many others. The CDC acknowledges that there have been 44 reported deaths.7

Dr. Harper, who seems to specialize in dropping bombshells, dropped another in an interview with ABC News when she admitted that “The rate of serious adverse events is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.”8 This being the case, one might want to take one’s chances with cancer, especially because the side effects of the vaccine are immediate, while the possibility of developing cancer is years in the future.

In the clinical studies alone, 23 girls died after receiving either Gardasil or the Aluminum control injection. 15 of the 13,686 girls who received Gardasil died, while 8 died among the 11,004 who received the Aluminum shot. There was only one death among the group that had a saline placebo. What this means is that 1 out of every 912 girls in the Gardasil clinical studies died. (9, see page 8.) The cervical cancer death rate is 1 out of every 40,000 women per year.10
The numbers of deaths and adverse effects are undoubtedly underestimates. Dr. Harper’s comments to ABC News concur with the National Vaccine Information Center’s claim that “though nearly 70 percent of all Gardasil reaction reports were filed by Merck, a whopping 89 percent of the reports Merck did file were so incomplete there was not enough information for health officials to do a proper follow-up and review.”11 On average, less than 10 percent—perhaps even less than 1 percent—of serious vaccine adverse events are ever reported, according to the American Journal of Public Health.12

Given the severity and frequency of Gardasil adverse reactions, I definitely wasn’t the only one in Dr. Harper’s audience who winced when she dismissed most Gardasil side effects as “easily just needle phobia.”

Due to the young age of the trial participants and the short duration of the studies, the effects of Gardasil on female fecundity have not been studied. I did discover, in my post-conference reading, that Polysorbate 80, an ingredient in the vaccine (13, see page 12), has been observed in a European clinical study to cause infertility in rats.14 Is this an additional concern? Time will tell.

I do not wish to give the impression that Dr. Harper presented, even inadvertently, a consistently negative view of her own vaccine. She did tout certain “real benefits,” chief among them that “the vaccine will reduce the number of follow-up tests after abnormal PAP smears,” and thereby reduce the “relationship tension,” “stress and anxiety” of abnormal or false HPV positive results.

To me, however, this seems a rather slim promise, especially when weighed against the deaths and side effects caused by the Gardasil campaign. Should millions of girls in the United States, many as young as 9, be put at risk, so that sexually active adults can have less “relationship tension” about false positive Hepatitis results? Is the current rate of death, sterility and serious immune dysfunction from Gardasil worth the potential that in 60 years a minimal amount of a cervical disease (that is already decreasing on its own) may perhaps be reduced?

But what I really wanted to know is why Merck is so eagerly marketing such a dangerous and ineffective vaccine? Aren’t there other ways they could make a profit? While Merck’s behavior is probably adequately explained by the profit motive, what about those in the Health and Human Services bureaucracy who apparently see Gardasil as medicine’s gift to women? What motivates them?

I (Steve) think that they see Gardasil as what one might call a “wedge” drug. For them, the success of this public vaccination campaign has less to do with stopping cervical cancer, than it does with opening the door to other vaccination campaigns for other sexually transmitted diseases, and perhaps even including pregnancy itself. For if they can overcome the objections of parents and religious organizations to vaccinating pre-pubescent—and not sexually active—girls against one form of STD, then it will make it easier for them to embark on similar programs in the future.

After all, the proponents of sexual liberation are determined not to let mere disease—or even death—stand in the way of their pleasures. They believe that there must be technological solutions to the diseases that have arisen from their relentless promotion of promiscuity. After all, the alternative is too horrible to contemplate: They might have to learn to control their appetites. And they might have to teach abstinence.

Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute.
Joan Robinson is an Assistant Editor at the Population Research Institute.

The Neglected Heart

I lost my virginity when I was 15. My boyfriend and I thought we loved each other.
But once we began having sex, it completely destroyed any love we had.
I felt he was no longer interested in spending time with me —
he was interested in spending time with my body.
- AMANDA,
A COLLEGE STUDENT

I wish someone had been preaching abstinence in my ear when I was in high school.
That was when my sexual activity started. I don't even want to think about my college years.
I wish I had saved this for my wife.

- MIKE, A 26-YEAR-OLD HUSBAND

There is no condom for the heart.

- ABSTINENCE EDUCATION POSTER

In discussions of teen sex, much is said about the dangers of pregnancy and disease — but far less about the emotional hazards. And that’s a problem, because the destructive psychological consequences of temporary sexual relationships are very real. Being aware of them can help a young person make and stick to the decision to avoid premature sexual involvement.

That’s not to say we should downplay the physical consequences of uncommitted sex. Pregnancy is a life-changing event. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) — and there are now more than 20 — can rob you of your health and even your life. Condoms can reduce but do not eliminate these physical risks. About 15% of adults who use condoms to prevent pregnancy find themselves pregnant over the course of a year.1 Consistent and correct condom use during vaginal sex can reduce the risk of sexual transmission of HIV/AIDS by about 85% but only if a person uses them correctly 100% of the time. Consistent condom use reduces by only 50% the risk for chlamydia2 — the cause of a substantial proportion of female infertility. And few people achieve consistent/correct use.3 Although there is some evidence that 100% condom use may reduce the risk for human papillomavirus4 — the cause of virtually all cervical cancer in women — a significant risk remains. Some STIs can be passed on by skin-to-skin contact in the entire genital area, only a small part of which is covered by a condom.

Sex and the human heart

For human beings, of course, sex is about much more than the body. It’s the emotional or psychological dimension of sex that makes it distinctively human. Our entire person — mind, body, and feelings — is involved. That’s why sexual intimacy has potentially powerful emotional consequences.

Why is it so much harder to discuss sex and emotional hurt — to name and talk about the damaging psychological effects that can come from premature sexual involvement?

For one thing, most of us have never heard this aspect of sex discussed. Our parents didn’t talk to us about it. The media don’t depict the emotional consequences of sex; indeed, television and the movies typically depict sex as consequence-free. And the debate over what to teach about condoms in schools or whether teens should have over-the-counter access to the “morning after” pill usually fails to address the fact that condoms and pills do nothing to make sex emotionally safe. When it comes to trying to explain to their children or students how premature sex can harm one’s personality and character as well as one’s health, many adults are at a loss for words or reduced to vague generalities such as, “You’re too young,” “You’re not ready,” or “You’re not mature enough.”

Some of the psychological consequences of premature sex — such as feelings of regret — are beginning to get more attention. A 2004 survey conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy asked teenagers, “If you have had sexual intercourse, do you wish you had waited?” Two-thirds said yes.6

We’ve actually known about the emotional consequences of sex for a long time. Dr. Armand Nicholi, Jr., clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, describes a study he helped to carry out in the 1960s:

"Not long after the sexual revolution was underway, clinicians observed that the new sexual freedom was creating a psychological disaster. We began to study Harvard students who complained of emptiness and despondency.

"There was a gap between their social conscience and the morality they were practicing in their personal lives. The new sexual permissiveness was leading to empty relationships and feelings of self-contempt. Many of these students were preoccupied with the passing of time and with death. They yearned for meaning, for a moral framework.

"When some of them moved away from moral relativism to a system of clear values — typically embracing a drug-free lifestyle and a strict sexual code — they reported that their relationships with the opposite sex improved, as did relations with peers in general, relationships with their parents, and their academic performance."7

The Harvard study, besides showing the negative effects of uncommitted sex, also shows that individuals can choose to change their sexual behavior and reap the rewards of sexual self-discipline.



Ten Emotional Dangers

What are the specific emotional dangers of premature, uncommitted sex? These vary from person to person. Some emotional consequences are short-term but still serious. Some last a long time, even into marriage and parenting. Many of these psychological consequences are hard to imagine until they’ve been experienced. In all cases, the emotional repercussions of sexual experiences are not to be taken lightly. A moment’s reflection reminds us that emotional problems can have damaging, even crippling, effects on a person’s ability to lead a happy and productive life.

Let’s look at ten emotional dangers of premature sexual involvement.

Worry about pregnancy and disease

For many young people who have become sexually active, the fear of pregnancy or getting a sexually transmitted disease is a major emotional stress.

One high school girl told a counselor:

"I see some of my friends buying home pregnancy tests. They are so worried and so distracted every month, afraid that they might be pregnant. It’s a relief to me to be a virgin."

Says Russell Henke, a public school health education coordinator:

"I see kids going to the nurse in schools, crying a day after their first sexual experience, and wanting to be tested for AIDS. For some, it’s enough to cause them to stay away from further sexual involvement."


Regret and self-recrimination

Both guys and girls can suffer sharp regret following a sexual relationship, but girls are usually more vulnerable. One abstinence speaker asks his teen audiences:

"What happens when a girl has sex with a boy? She typically feels closer to him. You might think it would be the same with a boy. Not necessarily."

Research, in fact, finds a gender difference: "Women are likely to have sex to strengthen relationships and increase intimacy, whereas men are likely to have sex to gain physical pleasure."8

A girl who sees sex as a way to "show you care" may feel cheated and used when the boy doesn’t show a greater romantic interest after the sexual experience. Says a 15-year-old girl: "I didn’t expect the guy to marry me, but I never expected him to avoid me in school."

Bob Bartlett, who teaches a freshman human sexuality class in a Richfield, Minnesota, high school, shares the story of “Sandy” [the names of young people in this article have been changed]:

"Sandy, a bright and pretty girl, asked to see me during lunch period. She explained that she had never had a boyfriend, so she was excited when a senior asked her out. After they dated for several weeks, he asked her to have sex with him. She was reluctant, but he persisted. She was afraid of appearing immature and losing him, so she consented."

"'Did it work?' I gently asked. 'Did you keep him?'

"Sandy replied: 'For another week. We had sex again, and then he dropped me. He said I wasn't good enough. There was no spark. I know now that he didn't really love me. I feel so stupid.'"9

Even when there are “new rules” about sex — as in “hooking up,” a practice increasingly common on college campuses (and spreading to younger ages) that explicitly permits sexual interaction from kissing to intercourse, even without affection and with someone you may hardly know — girls typically end up more vulnerable, often hoping after the sexual contact that the guy will call.10 Sometimes the regret goes in the opposite direction: You feel trapped after the relationship turns sexual. Says Karen, age 16:

"I truly regret that my first time was with a guy that I didn't care that much about. I am still going out with him, which is getting to be a problem. Since that first night, he expects sex on every date. When I don't feel like it, we end up in a big argument. I'd like to end this relationship and date others, but after being so intimate, it's awfully tough."

Sexual regrets can last for many years. Not long ago, I received a letter from a 33-year-old woman, now a psychiatrist, who said she is very much concerned about the sexual pressures and temptations facing young people today. She wanted to share the lessons about sex that she learned the hard way. After high school, she says, she spent a year abroad as an exchange student:

"I was a virgin when I left, but felt I was protected. I had gotten an IUD so I could make my own decisions about sex if and when I wanted to. I had steeled myself against commitment. I was never going to marry or have children — I was going to have a career. During that year abroad, I was very promiscuous.

"But the fact is, it cost me to be separated from myself. The longest-standing wound I gave myself was heartfelt. That sick, used feeling of having given a precious part of myself — my soul — to so many and for nothing, still aches. I never imagined I’d pay so dearly and for so long. This woman says she is happily married now and has a good sexual relationship with her husband. But she still carries the emotional scars of those early sexual experiences. She wants young people to know that 'sex without commitment is very risky for the heart.'"

Guys who get both sexually and emotionally involved with a girl can also suffer a lot of hurt. Here’s a guy with deep regrets:

"A year ago I started dating a girl two years younger. We fell head over heels in love. Our parents gave us total freedom. When I’d go to her house, her folks would go to bed early so we could be alone.

"It was wonderful. We were alone together sometimes as often as six nights a week. We started necking a little, then all the time. I started getting a little fresh, and she resisted, but she finally gave in for fear of losing me. One thing led to another, and before we knew it, we had gone too far.

"We told ourselves that we were in love and as soon as she was out of school, we’d be married — so what difference did it make? Then one night we had a terrible argument, and though it had nothing to do with sex, I know it would never have happened if we had been behaving ourselves.

"Anyway, she hit me, and I hit her back. I have never forgiven myself for that. She went running home and told her mother EVERYTHING that happened between us. You can imagine what happened after that.

"I was going to college at the time. I couldn’t keep my mind on my studies. I just wanted to lie down and die. Finally, I knew I was flunking out, so I quit college and joined the Navy. I saw her on the street just once before I left for basic training. She cried and told me she still felt the same about me and was sorry for what she had done, but it was too late then.

"I’d give anything in the world if she had stuck to her guns and I hadn’t been so persistent. Any girl who thinks she has to put out to keep a guy is crazy. I would have stayed with her if she had only let me hold her hand. — A Sorry Sailor"11


Guilt

Guilt is a special form of regret — a strong sense of having done something morally wrong. Guilt can be a healthy moral experience if you take it as a sign that your conscience is alive and working — and as a reason to avoid in the future the behavior that caused you to have a guilty conscience.

Girls are more likely than guys to report guilt about a first sexual experience, and the guilt is greater if the experience occurred under the influence of drugs or alcohol.12 Both guys and girls are more likely to report guilt if their first intercourse occurred with a casual partner.13

In his book for teens, Love, Dating, and Sex, George Eager offers this advice to young men: "When the break-up comes, it's usually a lot tougher on the girls than it is on the guys. It's not something you want on your conscience — that you caused a girl to have deep emotional problems."14 A 16-year-old boy in California said he stopped having sex with girls when he realized and felt guilty about the pain he was causing: "You see them crying and confused. They say they love you, but you don't love them."

Guilt after sex may also stem from one’s religious convictions. The major world religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all teach that sex is a beautiful gift from a good God but that God reserves sex for the committed love relationship of marriage.

A December 2002 Newsweek cover article on the “new virginity” (most high school students now report that they have not had sexual intercourse) included a story about a young man who regretted going against his religious beliefs about sex. Lucian Shulte, a Roman Catholic, said his parents taught him the importance of chastity and he had always planned to “wait until marriage.” But then one warm summer night, he found himself with a girl who was very willing — and they had intercourse. It was over in a hurry and lacked any sense of intimacy. He said:

"In the movies, when people have sex, it’s always romantic. Physically, it felt good, but emotionally it felt really awkward. I was worried that our relationship was now going to be a lot more serious than it was before. It was like, 'Now what is she going to expect from me?'"15

Lucian felt guilty about what he had done. He also worried about pregnancy and disease. He promised himself, never again. Now, as a college student, he’s still faithful to that decision. He says, "I’m looking forward to intimacy with my wife, someone I’ll truly love and want to spend the rest of my life with. It sounds corny, but it’s for real."

Abortion.

Many teens — an estimated 300,000 a year — turn to abortion when they find themselves facing a pregnancy. As both sides of the abortion debate now acknowledge, abortion ends a developing human life (there’s a beating heart at 18 days, measurable brain waves at 6 weeks). Many women report distressing emotional consequences after abortion — such as depression, nightmares, loss of self-worth, and guilt — sometimes right away, sometimes not until later.16

In his book, Making Abortion Rare: A Healing Strategy for a Divided Nation, David Reardon reports research finding that more than 70% of women who had an abortion said they felt it was wrong — the taking of a human life — but that they went against their conscience because at the time they felt they had no other choice.17 Sometimes moral misgivings about their abortion decisions did not occur until years later. Here, for example, is the testimony of a young mother, now in her early 30s, concerning the abortion she had when she was in college:

"It was my sophomore year. I came back from winter break sick as a dog. The doctor in the campus infirmary took a urine test and told me in a non-judgmental way that I was pregnant. 'What would you like to do?' he asked.

"'I want to get rid of it,' I said, without even blinking an eye.

"He wrote down the phone number and address of a nearby women’s health clinic. The 'procedure' was surprisingly simple. There was strong cramping, but I could handle that. If someone had asked me right then how I felt about what I had just done, I would have said, 'Wow, this is great! I have my health back, I have my life back!'

"Go ahead, ask me now. I am, at this moment, crying.

"How callous I was. Just a kid, really. Self-centered and shallow. There were, and are now, so many other alternatives.

"I am humbled by my two amazing living children. Most of all, I am humbled by my friend, Amy. She felt so strongly for her miscarried unborn child that she gave the child a name and a funeral. I didn’t give mine a second thought — until I grew up."18

Guys, too, can suffer from the emotional aftershocks of abortion. I once listened to a young man, a freshman at our college, speaking to an audience of peers about the guilt he felt — including difficulty sleeping and studying — after he helped his girlfriend get an abortion. Bottom line: Regardless of how you feel about what the law should be regarding abortion, we can agree that abortion is not a quick fix. Its effects can reverberate for years. Indeed, national networks have formed to provide counseling for both men and women suffering emotional aftereffects of abortion.19


Loss of self-esteem and self-respect

Many persons suffer a loss of self-esteem after they find out they have a sexually transmitted disease. Larry had not heard of human papilloma virus (HPV) before he had sex with his girlfriend. Soon after, he noticed some small bumps on his penis. His physician told him he had genital warts caused by HPV. The warts did not respond well to acid treatment, laser techniques, or surgery. After protracted unsuccessful treatments, Larry began to worry if he would ever be able to marry because of the warts.20

Sometimes the loss of self-esteem after uncommitted sex leads a person into further casual sex, leading to further loss of self-esteem in an oppressive cycle from which it may be hard to break free. This pattern is described by a young woman who is a residence hall director at our college:

There are girls in our dorm who have had multiple pregnancies and multiple abortions. The ironic thing is that practically all the girls who talk to me say they hate the whole scene — the bars, the parties, the attitudes and sexual expectations of guys. But because they have such low self-esteem, they will settle for any kind of attention from guys, and they keep going back to the same kind of situations that got them into trouble in the first place.

On both sides of dehumanized sex, there is a loss of dignity and self-worth. A college guy confided: "You feel pretty crummy when you get drunk at a party and have sex with some girl, and then the next morning you can’t even remember who she was."

Another college student described the loss of self-respect that followed his first sexual “conquest”:

"I finally got a girl into bed — actually it was in a car — when I was 17. I thought it was the hottest thing there was, but then she started saying she loved me and getting clingy. After four weeks of having sex as often as I wanted, I was tired of her. I finally dumped her, which made me feel even worse, because I could see that she was hurting."21

Oral sex and self-respect.

Surveys indicate that many young people today are having oral sex and don’t consider it “a big deal.”22 Some boys are reportedly demanding oral sex from their girlfriends the way they used to expect a good-night kiss. An April 2000 New York Times article, “The Face of Teenage Sex Grows Younger,” quoted psychologists counseling young girls who were emotionally distraught because of their involvement in oral sex.23

In response to these concerns, TV talk show hosts Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil each devoted an entire program to the issue of oral sex. On Dr. Phil’s program, a 13-year-old girl looked into the camera, tears streaming down her face, and said to other kids who might be watching:

"Don’t do this . . . please don’t do this. You will lose all your self-respect. Things will get worse for you, much worse."

Here are six important points to communicate to young people about oral sex:

1. It is definitely a sexual act. As one 15-year-old boy said, "Why do you think they call it oral sex?"

2. It is usually something boys ask girls to perform on them. There are also some girls who make the mistake of initiating oral sex because they think they can give a guy what he wants while avoiding pregnancy, but then discover that oral sex actually reduces intimacy.

3. No boy who truly respects or cares about a girl would ask her to do this.

4. Many sexually transmitted diseases — including herpes, chlamydia, and human papilloma virus — can be passed on through oral sex. 24

5. If you’re a girl and you engage in oral sex, you risk experiencing the same emotional hurts — such as feeling used and degraded — that frequently follow uncommitted sexual intercourse.

6. If you’re a boy and getting girls to do this, you’re disrespecting the girl (would you want somebody doing this to your sister?) and disrespecting your future spouse if you marry someday (is this something you’d want that person to know?).


The corruption of character

When we treat others as sexual objects to be used for our selfish pleasure, we not only lose self-respect; we change our character — the kind of person we are becoming. Every choice we make in life affects our character, for good or for ill. Good choices strengthen our character. Bad choices deform our character.

Our conscience is the part of our character that distinguishes right from wrong and helps us make good choices. In our current permissive sexual environment, many young people have a badly distorted conscience that accepts as “okay” behaviors that are in fact very wrong. For example, the Rhode Island Rape Crisis Center conducted a survey of student attitudes toward “forced sex.” It asked 1,700 students grades 6 to 9: “Is it acceptable for a man to force sex on a woman if they’ve been dating for more than six months?” Nearly two-thirds of the boys said yes. More surprising, so did 49% of the girls.25

Sex can also corrupt character by leading people to lie to get sex. Common lies are: “I love you” and “I’ve never had an STD.” One young man spoke of how his sexual activity, like an addiction, undermined his self-control:

"It was like a drug. The more sex I had, the more I wanted. I couldn’t control myself, yet I wasn't satisfied at all."26

Pornography. With the rise of the Internet, pornography has become more readily available and consequently one of the most common (typically male) sexual addictions.27 In his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, Sean Covey writes of pornography’s corrosive effects on conscience:

"Like any other addiction, pornography sneaks up on you. It reminds me of a story I once read about frogs. If you put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out. But if you put it in lukewarm water, the frog will get cooked before it has the sense to jump out. It’s the same with pornography. What you look at today may have shocked you a year ago. But because the heat was ever so slowly turned up, you didn’t even notice that your conscience was being fried."28

Dr. Victor Cline, a psychotherapist who over 25 years has treated hundreds of adult men for pornography and sex addictions, writes:

"I found that nearly all of my adult sexual addicts’ problems started with porn exposure in childhood or adolescence."29


Shaken trust

Young people who feel used or betrayed after the break-up of a sexual relationship may experience difficulty trusting in future relationships. They don't want to be burned again. Brian, a college senior, tells his story:

"I first had intercourse with my girlfriend when we were 15. I'd been going with her for almost a year, and I loved her very much. She was friendly, outgoing, and charismatic. We'd done everything but have intercourse, and then one night she asked if we could go all the way.

"A few days later, we broke up. It was the most painful time of my life. I had opened up to her more than anybody, even my parents. I was depressed and nervous. I dropped out of sports and felt like a failure. In college, I've had mostly one-night stands. I'm afraid of falling in love."30


Depression and suicide

Depression becomes more common in the teens, but recent research shows it’s not an automatic consequence of being a teenager. Teens who abstain from risky behavior — such as sex, drugs, and drinking — are the least likely to get depressed. Both guys and girls who engage in high levels of risky behavior are the most likely to get depressed.31 And for a girl, even experimenting once with sex or drugs significantly increases her risk of depression.32

In some cases, depression leads to the tragedy of suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-olds. Nearly one in five teens say they have seriously considered suicide in the past year.33

In Sex and the Teenager, Kieran Sawyer writes:

"The more the relationship seems like real love, the more the young person is likely to invest, and the deeper the pain and hurt if the relationship breaks up."34

Given what we know about the emotional aftermath of broken sexual relationships, it’s reasonable to think that the pain from such break-ups is a factor in the depression and suicide deaths of some young people.

Research confirms this link. A study in Pediatrics found that the attempted suicide rate for sexually experienced girls between the ages of 12 and 16 is six times higher than it is for girls that age who are virgins.35 Recently, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that both boys and girls who are sexually active are more likely to feel depressed and attempt suicide than peers who are not sexually active.36


Damaged or ruined relationships

Sex can turn a good relationship bad. Other dimensions of the relationship soon stop developing. Negative emotions enter the picture. Eventually, they poison the relationship. Says a young man who identifies himself as a 22-year-old virgin:

"I've seen too many of my friends break up after their relationships turned physical. When you use sex too early, it will block other means of communicating love and can stunt the balanced growth of a relationship."

Jennifer, age 24, shares her story:

"With each date, my boyfriend's requests for sex became more convincing, and within two months I gave in. Sex became the center of our relationship. Like a cancer, it took over. New things entered — anger, impatience, jealousy, and selfishness. We just couldn't talk anymore. We grew very bored with each other. I desperately wanted a change."37

Relationships with parents.

Sex can also negatively affect relationships with people other than the person you’re sexually involved with. Most parents say they do not want their teenagers to engage in sexual activity38, and by going against that standard, teens may create conflict or distance in family relationships. Many teens who are having sex do everything they can to keep their parents from finding out because they know how much it would upset them. Here is one young girl’s story:

"Becky, 13, first had sex with her 15-year-old boyfriend. She knew her parents and other family members would be very hurt if they found out. When she missed her period, she went into a panic. She even had thoughts of committing suicide. To her great relief, a pregnancy test was negative. She decided she didn’t want to go through that again and broke up with her boyfriend."


Stunted Personal Development

Premature sexual involvement not only can stunt the development of a relationship; it can also stunt one’s development as a person.

Teenagers who are absorbed in an intense relationship are turning inward at the very time in their lives they should be reaching out — forming new friendships, joining clubs and teams, developing their interests and skills, taking on bigger social responsibilities. The teen years are a critical period for learning and development that will lay the foundation for a young person’s future. Opportunities missed then can never be regained. If young people don’t take advantage of these opportunities, they may never develop their full potential.

The risk appears to be greater for girls who get sexually involved and thereby close the door on other interests and relationships. Says New York City psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Kauffman:

"A girl who enters into a serious relationship with a boy very early in life may find out later that her individuality was thwarted. She became part of him and failed to develop her own interests, her sense of independent identity."39


Negative effects on marriage

Most teens say they dream of being happily married someday. We should encourage them to ask themselves, “What sexual decisions at this point in my life will help me realize my dream of a happy marriage? What problems might I cause for myself or my future spouse by being sexually intimate before marriage?” Here are four such problems:

Comparisons and flashbacks. If you have had sex with someone other than your marriage partner, there may be a tendency, sometimes beyond your control, to compare your spouse with previous partners.40 Says one young husband: “When I make love with my wife, I think, ‘My old girlfriend could kiss better,’ or ‘This girl could do that better.’ I can’t get rid of the comparisons.” Both men and women may also experience “sexual flashbacks” — mental images of previous partners — that can disrupt marital sexual intimacy.41

Infidelity. Adultery can end a marriage. Estimates of the percentage of people who cheat on their spouses vary, but many experts believe that infidelity on the part of both sexes has risen in recent decades.42 One possible reason: Sexual activity before marriage has increased. The ability to resist temptation is part of our character — something that is developed over time, through practice. If we haven’t practiced saying “no” to sexual temptations before marriage, it may be harder to resist such temptations after marriage.

Infertility. Many newly married American couples cannot conceive a baby. Infertility can be a tremendous stress on a marriage. If it was caused by a sexually transmitted disease such as chlamydia, the stress is even greater. (Chlamydia can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and scarring and narrowing of a woman’s fallopian tubes; this condition may prevent her eggs from being able to reach the uterus to be fertilized by the man’s sperm.) A 33-year-old wife says:

"Sometime during my wild college days, I picked up an infection that damaged the inside of my fallopian tubes and left me infertile. I am now married to a wonderful man who very much wants children, and the guilt I feel is overwhelming. We will look into adoption, but this whole ordeal has been terribly difficult."

A greater chance of divorce. Researchers have found that living together before marriage is associated with a greater risk of divorce.43 One 2003 study of women found that “the elevated risk of divorce is particularly great for women who cohabited with both their husband and another man.”44 The more live-in partners you have before marriage, the greater your chance of marital breakdown.

The research doesn’t tell us why living together or having sex before marriage might contribute to a greater probability of divorce. One plausible reason is that sex can keep you from getting to know the other person in a deep way and finding out whether you have the shared beliefs, values, and goals on which a lasting marriage can be built. John and Kathy Colligan, who have spent many years counseling couples preparing for marriage, offer their observations:

"We see many engaged couples who are living together. We find out by talking with them that they have little in common. They haven't discussed their values and goals. But the sexual attraction and involvement are very strong. When we suggest that they not live or sleep together, that they try to become friends and get to know each other to find out if they're really compatible, they often resist. We can see that this is a marriage likely to fail — and time after time, it does."45
Dr. Carson Daly says that when she was a college English professor, many students — usually young women but sometimes guys — would come to see her, ostensibly about a paper they’d written for her course. Once into the conversation, they would tell her about problems they were having in a relationship. Sex was almost always involved. She says:

"I don't think I ever met a student who was sorry he or she had postponed sexual activity, but I certainly met many who deeply regretted their sexual involvements. No one prepares young people for the aftereffects: the lowered self-esteem; the despairing sense of having been used; the self-contempt for being a user; the unease about having to lie about or at least conceal one’s activities from family members and others; the difficulty of breaking the cycle of compulsive sexual behavior; and the self-hatred of seeking, after each break-up, someone else to seduce in order to revive one’s fading self-image. No one tells young people that it sometimes takes years to recover from the effects of these sexual experiences, if one ever fully recovers."46



Ten rewards of waiting

It’s important to know about the emotional dangers of premature sex, but it’s equally important to be able to identify the benefits of saving sex for a truly committed love relationship. Here are ten rewards of waiting47:

Waiting will make your relationships better because you’ll spend more time getting to know each other.


Waiting will increase your self-respect.


Waiting will gain you respect for having the courage of your convictions.


Waiting will teach you to respect other people — you won’t tempt or pressure them.


Waiting takes the pressure off you.


Waiting means a clear conscience (no guilt) and peace of mind (no conflicts, no regrets).


Waiting will help you find the right mate — someone who values you for the person you are.


Waiting means a better sexual relationship in marriage — free of comparisons and based on trust. By waiting, you’re being faithful to your spouse even before you meet him or her.


By practicing the virtues involved in waiting — such as faithfulness, good judgment, self-control, modesty, and genuine respect for self and others — you’re developing the kind of character that will make you a good marriage partner.


By becoming a person of character yourself, you’ll be able to attract a person of character — the kind of person you’d like to marry and to have as the father or mother of your children.48


Don't Think, "It's Too Late For Me"

Many teens who have already been sexually involved make the mistake of thinking, “It's too late for me to change even if I wanted to.” But the truth is that all of us, no matter what our age, have the freedom at any point in our lives to make different choices.

Teens need real-life stories of young people who were sexually involved once but have made a fresh start. We can point to the Harvard study showing the benefits to college women who adopted a strict sexual code after having been sexually permissive. We can point to Lucian Shulte, the student featured in Newsweek who had sex with a girl in high school, then resolved to abstain and is still living that lifestyle in college. And here is Cathy, a high school girl who is putting her mistakes behind her:

"I’ve had sex with a lot of guys, but I was always drunk so I didn’t think it mattered. Now I realize that I gave each of those guys a part of myself. I don’t want all that pain anymore. I’m going to make a new beginning and not have sex again until I’m married."49

Stories like these teach a vital life lesson: We can’t change the past, but we can choose the future.

Sex can be a source of great pleasure and joy. But it’s clear that it can also be the source of deep wounds and suffering. What makes the difference is the relationship within which it occurs. Sex is most joyful, meaningful, and fulfilling — most emotionally safe as well as physically safe — when it occurs within a loving, total, and binding commitment. Historically, we have called that marriage. Sexual union is then part of something bigger — the union of two people’s lives.

Please see link to article for References.

Sacrificing Humans to the Condom Gods

Is it flippant to wonder if the major international AIDS institutions, the United Nations and its many allied nongovernmental organizations, actually worship the condom? After all, they are willing to make sacrifices – human sacrifices – in the name of the condom. Right now, these groups are in the process of sacrificing the people of Uganda.

Uganda must be sacrificed because its AIDS rate is too low, and it is low because the government of Uganda decided almost from the beginning of the epidemic to seek to convince the general population to change its behaviors. School children were told to abstain and to delay sexual initiation. Married couples were told to remain faithful to one another. The school children listened; the couples listened, and Uganda escaped the epidemic that has devastated every other country in its region.

But this success through a veritable sexual counter-revolution could never be acceptable to the liberal and sexually liberated members of the international AIDS establishment, who needed to prove that the new norms of sexual promiscuity were not to blame for the explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, culminating in the AIDS epidemic, and that sexual promiscuity could even be made "safe" through a tiny piece of latex.

And so they have engaged in a massive campaign of misinformation that is now being advanced by sympathetic or ignorant media outlets almost every day of the week. They must turn reality on its head to make their case.

Propaganda: Condoms were responsible for the success in Uganda, and cases of AIDS may now increase because the Bush administration has begun to replace condoms with abstinence-only training. According to a August 30th story in the Guardian newspaper, "Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said US cuts in funding for condoms and an emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a shortage of condoms in Uganda, one of the few African countries which has succeeded in reducing its AIDS rates. 'There is no doubt in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven by [US policies],' Mr. Lewis said yesterday. 'To impose a dogma-driven policy that is fundamentally flawed is doing damage to Africa.'" According to Reuters, Lewis claimed that Bush's "distortion of the preventive apparatus . . . is resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred."

Reality: Abstinence and fidelity were responsible for the success in Uganda, and AIDS may now increase because Western institutions have insisted that condoms replace abstinence and fidelity training. According to Dr. Edward Green, a Harvard medical professor and an expert on Uganda, "Abstinence and fidelity objectives and indicators have been almost completely removed from Uganda's current national AIDS strategy (which were central to earlier strategies), apparently to appease the wazungu (foreign AIDS advisors)." And so there is the possibility that the West could use condoms to raise AIDS rates while at the same time blaming abstinence, in order to make the case for even more condoms.

Propaganda: It is more important to liberate Ugandan women from conventional marriage than it is to liberate Ugandan women from prostitution, since marriage is an enormous threat to women. According to Lewis, "As more and more research is done on the particular vulnerability of women to infection, we're learning more about the situations in which risk is paramount. And extraordinarily enough, according to UNAIDS, the risk is particularly high in apparently monogamous marriages and partnerships. Ironically, and lethally, in the age of AIDS in Africa, marriage can be dangerous to women's health. . . . There is virtually no defense against that reality: the power imbalance in marriage is too great to permit or to request the regular use of condoms. Thus it is that the classic 'ABC' intervention [Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms as a last resort] doesn't work in the one place where the risk for the woman may be greatest….A way must be found to allow the woman to protect herself, independent of male hegemony."

Reality: It is difficult to know whether this statement is simply chauvinist (men cannot remain faithful and do not care if they infect their wives), or chauvinist and racist (black men cannot remain faithful and do not care if they infect their wives). But the idea that married women are more vulnerable than prostitutes because some married men are promiscuous – when all men who frequent prostitutes are by definition promiscuous – is ridiculous.

Propaganda: The Christian beliefs of George W. Bush and the Ugandan first lady are guiding them to replace sound public health policy – again focused almost exclusively on the condom – with "abstinence only" religious doctrine. According to the Guardian, "Campaigners accuse Uganda's first lady, Janet Museveni, of being instrumental in the switch towards a policy of abstinence. Ugandan government officials say that her religious beliefs, stemming from being a born-again Christian, are central to her promotion of the message of abstinence."

Reality: It was traditional religious beliefs that guided the Ugandan government and its people to reduce sexual promiscuity so successfully in the late 1980s and 1990s.

In this perverse quest to prop up the condom, all things tied to self-control – the only sure way to avoid the sexual transmission of AIDS – are blamed for a disease spread primarily through a lack of self-control. Green is preparing for the worst: "I personally have been fearing an increase in national prevalence for a couple of years . . . If Uganda's AIDS program looks increasingly like that of any other African country (condoms, testing, pills), it would follow that Uganda would begin to have results like other African countries. . . . After a decade of unprecedented HIV prevalence decline, casual sex and HIV prevalence may now be on the rise. From what we have seen already, 'experts' are probably preparing to blame this on Uganda moving to 'abstinence only.'"

But is it possible that not everyone in the mainstream media has accepted this fiction? Last Tuesday, the same day that Reuters dutifully reported that, "US Abstinence Drive Hurts AIDS Fight – UN Official," the news service ran another story with the headline, "Topless Virgins Vie for King in AIDS-hit Swaziland." Apparently, "More than 50,000 bare-breasted virgins vied to become the King of Swaziland's 13th wife on Monday in a ceremony which critics say ill befits a country with the world's highest HIV/AIDS rate. King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, arrived dressed in a leopard-skin loincloth to watch the Reed Dance ceremony, which he has used since 1999 to pluck new brides from the girls dressed in little more than beaded mini-skirts. . . . Critics say [King] Mswati, who has courted controversy for his lavish lifestyle . . . sets a bad example by encouraging polygamy and teenage sex in a country where 40 percent of adults live with HIV."

Were we supposed to compare the two articles, and notice that the UN and its friends can condemn Bush (who has pledged $15 billion to fight AIDS), Christianity, abstinence and fidelity in one article, while no Western critics could be found for the bizarre ritual of promiscuity in the other article? Were we supposed to notice that people like Lewis are fixated on Uganda, where the AIDS infection rate is 6 percent, instead of places like Swaziland, where the entire society may come crumbling down?

Douglas Sylva is Senior Fellow at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). His e-mail address is dsylva@thefactis.org

More on UN Discrimination Against Abstinence Groups

Chastity Pledge Study "Deliberately" Skewed to make Programs Appear Ineffectual

WASHINGTON, June 16, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A so-called scientific analysis of the efficacy of abstinence pledges that concluded that young people who make pledges of abstinence were at equal risk for sexually transmitted disease (STD) and more likely to engage in anal and oral sex has been criticized as “deliberately” misleading, “inaccurate,” and “junk science.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector and Dr. Kirk Johnson re-examined the data and claims as presented by professors Peter Bearman and Hanna Bruckner in the April 2005 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, concluding that “Bearman and Bruckner’s conclusions were inaccurate . . . Moreover, in crucial respects they deliberately misled the press and public.”

Explaining the deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, Rector and Johnson point out that Bearman and Bruckner “culled through the Add Health sample looking for tiny sub-groups of pledgers with higher risk behaviours,” then describing the high-risk behaviours of these tiny subgroups, allowing the press to draw their own conclusions, by inferring “that they are talking about pledgers in general.”

“The centerpiece of their argument about pledgers and heightened sexual risk activity is a small group of pledgers who engaged in anal sex without vaginal sex,” Rector and Johnson explain. “This ‘risk group’ consists of 21 persons out of a sample of 14,116. Bearman and Bruckner focus on this microscopic group while deliberately failing to inform their audience of the obvious and critical fact that pledgers as a whole are substantially less likely to engage in anal sex when compared to non-pledgers.”

“This tactic is akin to finding a small rocky island in the middle of the ocean, describing the island in detail without describing the surrounding ocean, and then suggesting that the ocean is dry and rocky,” they add. “It is junk science, a willful deception of the American public.”

Rector and Johnson conclude that virginity pledgers are substantially more likely to not engage in risky sexual behaviours, and that those who do break the pledge are still less likely than non-pledgers to engage in more risky anal or oral sex – a direct contradiction to the supposed conclusions reached by Bearman and Bruckner.

“Compared to non-pledgers from the same social backgrounds, pledgers have far fewer sex partners,” Rector and Johnson conclude. “Pledgers are also less likely to engage in sex while in high school, less likely to experience teen pregnancy, less likely to have a child out-of-wedlock, less likely to have children in their teen and young adult years, and less likely to engage in non-marital sex as young adults.”

Read Rector and Johnson’s paper: “Adolescent Virginity Pledges, Condom Use, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among Young Adults (Draft)

Abstinence Education Shows Its Wisdom

Studies Reveal Positive Effects of Certain Sex-Ed Programs

WASHINGTON, D.C., OCT. 9, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Government support for sexual education programs that promote abstinence continues to divide opinions. The U.S. House of Representatives voted for a 49% increase in funding for abstinence education, the Washington Times reported Monday. A Senate vote is not likely until after the November elections.

If eventually approved, the increase would give $105 million in federal funds for 2005 to the abstinence program, up from $70.5 million this year.

The federal funds are "making an impact," said Leslee Unruh, president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse. She told the Washington Times, however, that abstinence education still receives only $1 for every $12 given to programs that stress condom use.

Promoting abstinence has plenty of opponents. On Sept. 28 the organization Advocates for Youth released a pair of reports that, according to the press release, "raise new questions about the effectiveness of the abstinence-only-until-marriage approach to sex education endorsed by the federal government."

Research into abstinence programs in 10 states by Advocates for Youth reportedly shows that in the long-term there is "no long-term success in delaying sexual initiation or reducing sexual risk-taking behaviors."


Counterview

But the positive effects of delaying sexual activity is strongly defended in studies published by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. On Sept. 21 the organization published a report entitled "Teens Who Make Virginity Pledges Have Substantially Improved Life Outcomes."

The report provides statistical evidence demonstrating that teen-agers who publicly pledge to refrain from sexual activity are less likely to experience teen pregnancy. And they will likely have fewer sexual partners.

The study cited data from the government-funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, showing that the behavior of adolescents who have made a virginity pledge is significantly different from that of peers who have not made a pledge. Teen-age girls who have taken a virginity pledge are one-third less likely to experience a pregnancy before age 18.

The Heritage report also observed that almost two-thirds of teens who do not make a virginity pledge are sexually active before age 18. By contrast, only 30% of teens who report having made a pledge become sexually active before age 18.

Even though those who pledge to chastity may eventually break their commitment, the report notes that delaying the onset of sexual activity has a number of positive effects. One to reduce the number of sexual partners by about half. Surveys cited in the report show that the benefits last into adulthood. For example, women who become sexually active in their early teen years are less likely to have stable marriages in their 30s when compared with women who wait.

Another advantage is the reduction in children born outside marriage. The report observes that children born and raised outside marriage are seven times more likely to live in poverty than those born and raised in intact married families. As well, they are more prone to a number of social problems, ranging from crime to emotional difficulties.

Adolescent girls who make a pledge to refrain from sexual activity are substantially less likely to give birth in their teens or early 20s. By age 18, 1.8% of those who were firmly pledged had given birth, compared with 3.8% of girls who did not make a pledge.

"Regrettably," the study notes, "teens today live in a sex-saturated popular culture that celebrates casual sex at an early age." Social institutions that teach abstinence values can play an important part in helping teens to media and peer pressure, concludes the report.

Further support for the efficacy of abstinence programs came in a study carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Washington Times reported July 16. The results attribute a 53% drop in teen pregnancy, from 1991 to 2000, to increased abstinence. Increased use of contraceptives accounted for 47% of the decline, according to the study.

Further data showed that girls aged 15 to 17 who were sexually active decreased from 50.6% in 1991 to 42.7% in 2001.

Comprehensive, in theory

Another report published by the Heritage Foundation helps explain why abstinence programs can help change teens' behavior. The study, "Comprehensive Sex Education vs. Authentic Abstinence: A Study of Competing Curricula," was published Aug. 10. It explained that in the past there were two basic approaches to sex education. There was the "safe sex" approach, which encourages teens to use contraception, especially condoms; and abstinence education, which focuses on delaying the onset of sexual activity.

In recent years a new approach, termed "abstinence-plus" or "comprehensive sexuality education," has been developed. This combines, in theory, information on abstinence and contraception.

Research for the report analyzed nine major abstinence-plus curricula and nine abstinence curricula. It revealed that in practice the abstinence-plus programs devoted only 4.7% of their page content to the topic of abstinence and 0% to healthy relationships and marriage.

Moreover, a detailed analysis of the contents of comprehensive sex-ed programs shows that their aim is not to have teens abstain from sexual activity. Rather, their aim is to reduce the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases that results from "unprotected" sexual activity. "Abstinence -- or not having sex -- is mentioned as one option that teens may consider to avoid risks, but the overwhelming emphasis is on reducing risk by encouraging contraceptive use."

By contrast, the programs promoting abstinence "take a more holistic approach to human sexuality." They place more emphasis on the social and psychological aspects of sex. As well, they examine themes such as love, intimacy and commitment. "Young people are taught that human sexuality is not primarily physical, but moral, emotional and psychological in nature."

The abstinence programs also promote the idea that "personal happiness, love and intimacy are most likely to occur within the commitment of a faithful marriage and that, in contrast, casual sex with multiple partners is likely to undermine the natural process of bonding and intimacy."

Where pregnancies rose

The ill effects of sex education programs that merely promote "safe sex" were made evident in a study published earlier this year in England. On March 14 the London-based Telegraph reported on a survey carried out by the Family Education Trust, entitled "Sex Education or Indoctrination?" The survey analyzed zones where the government's Teen-age Pregnancy Unit had set up programs to reduce the number of girls falling pregnant.

The unit's strategy involves more explicit sex education in schools, often conducted by nurses without teachers present. It also hands out free condoms and sends birthday cards when girls reach 14 asking them to attend confidential health checks without their parents.

The Trust's report found that in most places, there was a rise in teen-age pregnancies following the implementation of these programs. One, in Cornwall, saw a 17% rise in teen-age pregnancies between 2001 and 2002. In York, teen pregnancies soared 34%.

Scotland saw similar results after programs were introduced to distribute free morning-after pills and condoms, the Sunday Times reported April 11. Girls aged 13 to 15 in the zone affected, the Lothians, were 14% more likely to get pregnant than their counterparts elsewhere in Scotland, compared with 3% before the program started.

The region was selected as a test area for the government's Healthy Respect project. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, president of the Scottish bishops' conference, said the Healthy Respect model had failed. He urged that it should not be expanded.

"This approach has failed to tackle the rise in sexually transmitted infections, unwanted conceptions and abortion levels," he said. "Its value-free style should certainly not be used elsewhere in Scotland." Evidence is mounting, on both sides of the Atlantic, on the advantages of programs that promote abstinence and a more comprehensive view of human sexuality.