What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Virginity Making a Comeback?
For at least twenty years sex education in schools was synonymous with teaching contraception. Millions of dollars have been invested in such programs with meager results. Recently teenage birthrates have declined so notably that Newsweek magazine made the phenomenon its cover story in a December, 2002 issue. Coincidentally there has been a rise in abstinence-only sex education programs. The so-called comprehensive or safe-sex programs, which may include abstinence but emphasize contraception no longer have a monopoly. A review of the effectiveness of each approach is given below.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) identified the five “best” safe-sex curricula in an initiative it calls Programs that Work. Not one of them has produced a decline in the non-marital birth rate among teens. The American Medical Association in its Scientific Report 7 found no effect of the safer-sex curriculum on use of birth control among sexually active students. There was no statistical difference with comparison schools that did not offer the program. The British Medical Association’s Dr. Trevor Stammers found that sexual activity of 16 year olds was higher after a condom distribution program. Dr. Stammers writes: “Over the past twenty years the primary message in sex education has been ‘use contraception.’ This approach has clearly failed.” The medical journal Lancet found that teens who had comprehensive sex education were 54% more likely to have sex than teens with no sex education and 65% more likely to have sex than teens who received abstinence focused education.
The Alliance of safe-sex educators has concocted a fable that the present decline in teen birthrates is due 80% to contraception and 20% to abstinence. There are absolutely no studies to confirm this and in light of the miserable results cited above the numbers should be taken, not with a grain of salt, but with the entire salt shaker. A 1999 report of the Consortium of State Physicians Resource Councils stated, “The evidence points to sexual abstinence, not increased contraceptive use, as the primary reason for the decline in teen pregnancy and birth rates throughout the 1990’s.” It also added: “Obviously, programs in safer-sex education and condom distribution have not reduced out-of-wedlock birthrates among sexually active teens.” In a 1998 study of a Los Angeles high school condom distribution program the number of risky sexual activities actually increased. A 1999 study of a Seattle high school condom program resulted in a significant decrease of condom use and the decrease was the greatest in clinics that distributed the largest number of condoms.
In fairness to the safe-sex education approach, one showed positive results. The Baltimore Pregnancy Prevention Program advocated counseling and contraception. During 1981 and 1984 students in the program lost their virginity seven months later, on average, than other students. Within 28 months of the program about 50% of the girls in the control group had become pregnant while only 23% of the program participants became pregnant. However the program has never been replicated, even in Baltimore, and no similar programs are underway today.
Abstinence-only curricula seem to work. A study of 140 high risk students in upstate New York resulted in no reported pregnancies among the group during the period of the study. Another study of 7,000 seventh through tenth grade students participating in three different abstinence programs showed a 40% reduction in number of students who had initiated sexual intercourse as compared to those with no program. An Oregon study of 754 junior and senior high school students utilizing the abstinence-only program called FACTS achieved a 45% reduction in initiating sexual activity as compared with schools with conventional safer-sex curricula. The program called Sex Respect evaluated in 26 schools found that the pregnancy rate for girls who had taken the program was only 5% compared to 49% for girls who had not taken the program. An abstinence-based program developed in San Marcos, California had known pregnancies reduced from 20% in 1984 to 2.5% in 1986. The Journal of the American Medical Association (September 10, 1997 issue) reported that the factor most strongly associated with a delay in the onset of sexual activity was a pledge of abstinence. It was three times more strongly associated with delay in sex than the next most positively correlated factor.
Safer-sex education programs that emphasize use of condoms generally do not reduce teenage pregnancy nor do they universally reduce sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s). A study published in Family Planning Perspectives found that, “Generally, the condom’s effectiveness in preventing HIV transmission is estimated to be 87%....” The journal Lancet commented, “It is hard to show that condom promotion has had any effect on HIV epidemics.” A CDC study of eight STD’s: HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, chancroid, trichomoniasis, genital herpes, and human papillomavirus (HPV), found that condoms did not provide universal protection against any. Condoms are mainly ineffective against chlamydia and HPV which is the cause of nearly all cervical cancer. Every year 15,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed and 5,000 women die from the disease. Condoms could reduce the risk of gonorrhea, says the report, but only for men. Although they seem to be somewhat effective against HIV transmission there is still a one-in-eight chance of contracting the disease. If condomistic sex is safe, Russian roulette is safe. Is it better to offer teenagers reduced risk of one STD as a goal or the elimination of risk by practicing abstinence until marriage? Abstinence works 100% of the time.
Safer-sex programs have not only been ineffective but may also have contributed to the problem. Calling condomistic sex “protected” encourages sexual behavior. Sex appears to be the only thing that liberalism or secularism do not forbid. There is no hesitation in advocating abstinence from drug and alcohol abuse, drunk driving, or fighting even though some youths will fail. The message in these cases is, “avoid the risk altogether.” When it comes to sex the message is, “Wear condoms.” It is as if there is some mammalian right to sex in all circumstances and that teenagers cannot or will not be chaste, although most teenagers are. The same ideological mindset obsesses those who want to eradicate AIDS in Africa: use condoms. Ugandans rejected this approach and changed their sexual behavior with the result that HIV prevalence which was 15% in 1991 fell to 5% as of 2001. By contrast Nelson Mandela of South Africa has embraced the “safe-sex” strategy with a resulting 11.1% AIDS prevalence in that nation.
To engage in activity designed to create a new dependent life by someone who cannot support himself is like a drowning person undertaking to save another drowning person. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth says that children born of unmarried parents will spend 51% of their lifetime in poverty whereas children of married parents only 7% of their lifetime in poverty. Morality apart, unmarried parenthood is gross stupidity, meaning it is 144 times worse than normal stupidity.
Virginity until marriage is good for souls and bodies as well. It brings the greatest happiness to individuals and societies. As usual the Bible had it right all along, but the negative consequences of acting in opposition to its teachings should have taught us that.
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(Printed February, 2003)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
