LETTER: Alternative to abstinence
Editor,
In the week since The Statesman proclaimed that abstinence is the only way, (to where or what, by the way?) the Georgia Supreme Court has struck down Georgia’s 170-year old ban on extramarital sex and even Utah’s porn czar position has been eliminated. This has prompted me to re-examine the reasons that abstinence-only education has become the de-facto method of combating unwanted pregnancy and STDs over the last 20 years despite a clear lack of efficacy.
The ancient philosophical bias toward abstinence was cultivated as a result of the lack of effective contraceptives, and when sex resulted in pregnancy, the couple involved was expected to start a family so that they could work together to provide for the child’s needs. Marriage occurred largely after the fact. With the advent of birth control pills, condoms, diaphragms, and safe abortion, traditional reasons for remaining abstinent no longer held water.
Despite this, extramarital sex had become ingrained as a horrible sin in most western religions. In an effort to combat what they deemed as wrong, Reagan’s New Religious Right, along with Georgia congressman Jeremiah Denton and our own Orrin Hatch, introduced the Chastity Act, or AFLA in 1981.
The Adolescent Family Life Act created funding for abstinence-only sex education programs while rejecting funding for all other forms of sex ed, and limited discussion of contraception only to often inflated failure rates and shifted the primary focus to STDs (recall the War on Drugs was initiated at the same time with the same scare tactics employed, and we all know how well that has worked).
In the two decades since the adoption of chastity education, the percentage of sexually active teens has remained constant near 50 percent. However, the rate of unwanted teen pregnancy and occurrence of STDs has increased steadily since the mid 1980s. What does this mean? Abstinence-only education doesn’t reduce the frequency of teen sex and actually results in an increase in risky sexual behavior due to a lack of honest information available to youth. According to a 2001 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Seventeen magazine, half of sexually active 15- to 19-year-olds said that birth control pills provide protection against STDs.
Teaching youth that sex is something reserved only for those who are married is ineffective in combating the ill effects so often touted by opponents of sex ed. And why should the joy of sex be limited only to those trying to start a family? Why should they have more of a legal right to the pleasure and health benefits bestowed by sex than unmarried or homosexual couples?
Believe it or not, unmarried people have sex for the same reason married people do. We like or love the person we are with, it provides a sense of worthiness, beauty, power, and happiness, and “drum role please,” it feels good! Sex is safe, cheap and fun. Don’t deny yourself a wonderful experience because of outdated ideals, but do make sure you’re informed and practice safely.
Brandon Delk