The Connection
As we begin our walk into the third millenium, we are constantly met with the present problems of teen/young adult non-marital pregnancy, STDs, emotional brokenness, suicide, failure to bond, failure to thrive, pornography, sex abuse, divorce; the list goes on. These are not technically "problems"; rather, they are all symptoms of a basic underlying problem: non-marital sexual activity.
We have been putting generic, cheap bandages on a moribund wound. It’s time to dig into the wound, find the source of infection, and thoroughly clean it out.
What Has Happened?
For the past 30-40 years, sex educators have been teaching sex education to our children under two major assumptions:
- information will change behavior
- teens WILL have sex because they cannot control themselves
These "traditional"* sex educators believe that the more graphic, sexually detailed information given to teens is, the more "careful" they will be. That is, they believe that sexually explicit information will lead to birth control use, which will reduce teen pregnancy rates & STD infection rates because the sexual acts would have occurred anyway in "unprotected sex".
In the eyes of major sex educators such as Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth, and SIECUS, preventing teen pregnancy is paramount. Teens should not be discouraged from having sex; they should learn to do it "responsibly".
As the foremost agencies of social change, SIECUS, PP and AGI (Alan Guttmacher Institute) are concerned about lowering the number of teen births. Abortion is considered a follow-up birth control, and all decisions are equal as long as the thought process is the same.
Soon after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision (which legalized abortion on demand in this nation) by the U.S. Supreme Court (7-2 decision), PP Alan Guttmacher revealed one of the primary purposes of value-free sex education when he admitted: "The only avenue the IPPF and its allies could travel to win the battle for abortion on demand is through sex education." [HLI Reports, 4/98]
Instead of teaching youth to learn delayed gratification, self-control, and prevention through risk elimination, they have been teaching "risk reduction". Our children have been raised on risky education rather than on healthy education. They have learned all about safe and safer sex rather than about saved sex. The sex educators sacrificed morality for safety, but have not achieved either.
WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?
In order to understand the underlying philosophy of this "traditional"* sex education, it is necessary to review some history. Planned Parenthood of America originated from Margaret Sanger, a free-thinker born in 1879, who greatly admired Hitler and his plan of eugenics. She "plunged" into radical politics, feminism, and permissive sex in college. Her first publication, The Women Rebel, a paper of militant thought, violated the Comstock Obscenity Laws, and so she fled to England to avoid prosecution. There she was influenced by Thomas Malthus, who proposed that populations grow exponentially while production grows arithmetically. Sanger began to promote birth control and abortion based on the Malthusian theory. She returned to America, was able to get the charges dropped, and formed the Birth Control League which, by 1922, was privately funded and well established.
Sanger’s marriage failed; she experimented extensively sexually, and finally married into wealth. She used this wealth to fight for social planning through reproductive control in various state programs. In 1942, the Birth Control League was renamed Planned Parenthood Federation of America "because it had a more positive ring and conveyed a clean wholesome family-oriented image". The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) is the research arm of Planned Parenthood and is named after Planned Parenthood’s second president. Faye Wattleton, who replaced Guttmacher as president once said, "We are merely walking down the path Mrs. Sanger carved out for us".
And what is this path? It appears to be a commitment to undermine the moral value of teens. Wattleton also said, "We are not going to be an organization promoting celibacy and chastity". [LA Times, 17Oct1986, p.1] Planned Parenthood (PP) teaches "outercourse", which means every type of sexual activity except intercourse. PP even considers outercourse a form of abstinence. PP endorses pre-marital sex and sexual experimentation, and considers homosexuality and heterosexuality equally acceptable lifestyles. Debra Heffner, a PP educator, during a training session for educators and teacher trainers, commented: "We should teach teens about oral sex and mutual masturbation in order to help them delay the onset of sexual intercourse and its resulting consequences" [SIECUS Report, Sept/Oct 1988]. Heffner has also served as President of SIECUS.
In the PP brochure "Sex…The first time or anytime!", the young reader is informed: "Intercourse isn't the only way. Kissing, hugging, touching, masturbating, oral sex, are often very exciting and satisfying."
PP has been instrumental in blocking or injuncting parental notification and consent laws (regarding minors’ abortions) and informed consent laws (providing 24 hours and medical information to women considering abortion) throughout the nation over the years. PP fights fiercely against sexual abstinence programs for teens, and against decent burial or cremation for aborted babies. They also vehemently oppose health rules & regulations for abortion centers. This certainly seems to show a pattern to which most parents in this nation would object. For example, on the issue of abstinence, most American parents want their teens to learn how and why to abstain from sexual activity outside marriage. [click here for the stats] And certainly, if they were truly concerned about women’s health, they would support abortion center regulations, just as we all support health regulations for restaurants.
SIECUS is an acronym for Sex Information and Education Council of the United States. SIECUS was founded in 1964, has under 3000 members, a staff of 15, and an annual budget of about $1 million. Their mission is to insure that all people — including adolescents – have the right to affirm their sexuality as a natural part of their lives. This may sound wonderful, until one comes to understand that they work to promote the right of any individual at any age to make their own "responsible" sexual choices [i.e. use of condoms and chemical birth control]. There is a push to lower the age of sexual consent worldwide t
o 10 years; homosexuality and heterosexuality are to be equated.
SIECUS sees this agenda being accomplished through comprehensive sex education. Quoting SIECUS: "Homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual are morally neutral. Incest between adults and younger children can prove to be a satisfying and enriching experience". Their position on abstinence is that it is "a good choice, but only one choice".
Debra Heffner, past-president of SIECUS and Planned Parenthood educator in a training session for teacher trainers and educators [SIECUS Report, Sep-Oct/1988], noted: "We should teach teens about oral sex and mutual masturbation in order to help them delay the onset of sexual intercourse and its resulting consequences".
How many adults could realistically be involved in these activities and not have intercourse?
Yet, she believes that teens would have that kind of control. Since she believes that, why can’t she understand that teens would have the control to abstain by avoiding sexual activity altogether?
And amazingly, in this age of high teen pregnancy rates and STD epidemics, SIECUS writes: "Fear-based abstinence programs exaggerate the negative consequences of premarital sex." Explaining to teens the actual physical/psychological effects – the medical consequences — of "risk reduction" sexual activity is not fear-based; it shows real concern for their lives, and sincere respect for who they are as human beings.
Another actor in this movement was Alfred C. Kinsey. His works, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953) were "the stellar authority behind" the "Model Penal Code", which was drafted in 1955 by the American Law Institutes (ALI), which "deconstructed the family and paved the way for ‘non-traditional families’". Kinsey’s so-called "scientific" studies were "cited and referenced by the U.S. Supreme Court when handing down the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973". However, "Kinsey used unscientific fraudulent and even criminal methods in his research. He collected data from co-workers who sexually abused hundreds of minors and children as young as two months old to prove that children are sexual beings from birth and can enjoy sex with an adult. Some of his victims were subjected to more than 24 hours of non-stop sexual atrocities. Their cries of trauma and sobbing were misreported. Kinsey gathered his data using prison inmates, predatory pedophiles, and even a WWII Nazi officer whose victims (mostly children) were forced to choose between rape or the gas chamber. Two videos ‘The Children of Table 34’ from Family Research Council, and ‘Secret History’, a BBC documentary produced in 1998, as well as books authored by Judith Reisman, Ph.D. who has extensively researched Kinsey, expose his criminal methods, false data, and entire hoax."
The ALI upheld many of Kinsey’s false claims, such as "the claim that 10 percent of the population is homosexual, and that under the current state penal laws 95 percent of American males would be classified as sex offenders. ALI thus recommended the decriminalization of laws on sexual offenses such as sodomy." We have seen this come to pass with the U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down sodomy laws. Then, in 1954, "Kinsey collaborated with Mary S. Calderone, M.D." who "was the first medical director for Planned Parenthood and also the founder of SIECUS". Together they laid "the ‘scientific’ groundwork for legalizing abortion".
"According to Dr. Judith Reisman, ‘Kinsey lives and reigns today in classrooms across America’. SIECUS and Kinsey’s reports are the basis for the comprehensive, sexually explicit, sex education programs prevalent in our public schools today." Most of these curricula promote "contraceptive use and demean sexual modesty, encourage promiscuity, equate homosexual relationships with marriage, devalue parental authority, and promote pornography…The wave of anything-goes sex has now reached the point where pedophilia is closer to becoming a mainstream activity. J. Levine wrote "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex" (University of Minnesota Press, 2001) declares that, ‘Sex is a wonderful, crucial part of growing up, and children and teens can enjoy the pleasures of the body and be safe too’."
[Human Life Alliance, Winter, 2003; "Kinsey’s Horrific Legacy Continues," FRC News, June/July 2003]
* They are termed "traditional" because they have been teaching this way for such a long time.
What Have We Accomplished?
Many teachers and administrators in public schools do not understand the mentality which Comprehensive Sex Education is pushing on our children – valueless, immediate gratification, and sexual stimulation of any kind at any time by anyone at any age for an addictive high. Most teachers and administrators still want to support abstinence; but they have not communicated with parents. If they would, they’d find that most parents want character-based abstinence-only education, too!
Most educators and parents struggle with great concern and confusion over those students who are already sexually active. They ask, "What about the students who are going to have sex anyway?" The answer is that ALL students benefit from learning healthy choices; we never serve teens well by enabling their unhealthy choices. We also endanger abstaining teens when birth control methodology is discussed in the classroom because they perceive that adults want them to be sexually active.
Birth control methods never protect the heart, and they are quite ineffective against most STDs.
After 30 years of Comprehensive Sex Education, the research is clear: condom distribution and methodology have increased sexual activity among teens in almost every study, have not lowered teen pregnancy in any study, and have not lowered overall STD problems.
Teaching teens how to use condoms for 30 years has made the situation much worse and has done nothing to promote personal responsibility, self-control, self-discipline, and other character traits such as honesty, trust, integrity, respect for others and respect for oneself. Many of our teens do not understand these traditional standards because they have been raised in a moral vacuum.
What Are Our Alternatives?
Aristotle, a pagan, wrote that for a civilization to survive and prosper, it must be based upon standards or principles called the "classical virtues": prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. To teach these virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice to our teens is not teaching a particular religious dogma; we will be teaching them how to help our civilization survive!
We have been frozen for years by our fear of "imposing our morality" on others. But what has happened? As we good people did nothing, evil triumphe
d and others "imposed their immorality" on our children. An anonymous sage wrote: "When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost."
If we want our civilization to survive and improve, we must break out of our fearful omissions and take action now. A wise person once said: "You only really believe that which motivates you to action." Do we really believe we can help our teens to live healthy lives? Do we really believe one person can make a difference?
What Can We Do?
First of all, we have to understand the culpability and failure of birth control. Birth control has led to infidelity in marriage, sexual experimentation, and promiscuity. Following in this wake, have surfaced STD epidemics, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, sex abuse, pornography, divorce, and so on.
As regards sexually transmitted disease, it is important to note that chemical birth control methods provide NO protection against STDs/STIs. If barrier and chemical birth control methods fail so much of the time to stop pregnancy (see above), how can we expect them to stop sexually transmitted diseases, which are so much smaller than a sperm, which can be transmitted any day of the year, and many of which can be passed by skin-to-skin contact (not through fluids)?
If we know that birth control methods allow for such high failure rates, why do we continue to promote such risky behavior – sexual Russian Roulette — to our young people?
When birth control "fails" (i.e. the woman gets pregnant), abortion is pushed as "back-up birth control".
Yet, in a Wall Street Journal letter to the editor in 1991, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) U.S. Medical Director Dr. Louise Tyrer, made public the fact that two-thirds (2/3) of unplanned pregnancies are due to the failure of birth control. That is about 67%!
These women are statistically much more likely to have abortions than those who were not using birth control when they unexpectedly became pregnant.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) also has noted that a study conducted in 1994-95 [Alan Guttmacher Institute, The Lancet 17Aug96, p.469] found that 57.5% of the women procuring abortions had been using birth control methods the month they became pregnant [32.9% of the women in this study were 20-24; 45.6% were over age 24].
Similarly, researchers recently found that two thirds (about 67%) of France's unplanned pregnancies were among women using contraceptives. A fifth of the unplanned pregnancies happened when women were on the Pill and a tenth were among those using the intra-uterine device (IUD) [Dr Nathalie Bajos and colleagues from Inserm, France's national medical research institute, studied 2,863 women, Human Reproduction, 4/03].
In other words, the birth control methods may "fail" to stop pregnancy the majority of the time.
The IPPF official 1993 publication "Progress Postponed: Abortion in Europe in the 1990s," contains proceedings of a 1990 conference co-sponsored by IPPF. The purpose of the conference was to discuss ways to "reduce abortion" through better family planning.
However, many of the speakers concluded that abortion is inseparable from contraception and is even preferable to it.
Deborah Rogow of International Women’s Health Coalition noted that "many abortion clients are themselves contraceptive users…
Despite their differences, abortion and contraception are two ways of accomplishing the same primary goal: control over one’s reproduction".
At a 1995 PPFA conference, Dr. A. Kinsey stated, "At the risk of being repetitious, I would remind the group that we have found the highest frequency of induced abortion in the group which, in general, most frequently uses contraceptives".
Not only do birth control methods "fail" to stop pregnancy; the comprehensive sex educators and abortion providers have known this for many years…
Secondly, from a Pro-Life point of view, we know that approximately 85% of all abortions are procured by unmarried girls and women. Thus, abstinence will stop the vast majority of abortions in this nation.
If we are going to stop abortion, we must each redirect at least 10%-20% of our pro-life energy to preventive strategies. As Ben Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". By helping our young people to maintain and renew their virginity, they will avoid all the heavy emotional, physical, and financial burdens.
Thirdly, we can teach sexual abstinence and chastity as a lifestyle, not as a birth control method. Abstinence ought to be taught as part of character education. Our training can be directive, not values neutral. Training can be designed to show the real consequences of sexual involvement with no mixed messages. Our children also need to understand that sex is an expression of love and that love is based on commitment, responsibility, trust, and respect. The only things we can mix in our education program are abstinence and character education.
As a fourth step, we can and must involve and welcome parents in the training process. By helping parents to develop the confidence they need to communicate with their teens, we will help to strengthen family ties.
Finally, we can understand the key position that the basic family unit holds and the importance of raising our children through an appreciation of character-based abstinence education. The basic family unit must be upheld and protected. Whether we send our children to public, private, or home school, we must make time to teach them the basis of human relationships – respect for each other and for oneself. We can completely avoid fears and concerns of "imposing religious morality" on our teens by simply describing to them the physical and emotional consequences of uncommitted sexual activity. It doesn’t take a National Merit Finalist to realize that the negative consequences of uncommitted sexual activity far outweigh the momentary benefits.
If we ever hope to win the abortion battle, we must stop the cause of abortion: sexual activity outside marriage. The abortion industry has had to prey on younger and younger girls by encouraging their sexual activity in order to keep the wealthy industry going. As we teach all our adolescents the benefits of sexual abstinence and the refusal skills they need, the numbers of panicked pregnant teens will dwindle, and the abortion sites will close their doors for good.
Abstinence Stops Abortion…
© 2012 Alabama Physicians For Life, Inc.
Government Spends $12 On Safe Sex And Contraceptives For Every $1 Spent On Ab
stinence: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/bg1718.cfm [14Jan04]