I don't think that in this day and age the problem is ignorance. We've had sex education in schools for quite some time. I think the problem is the "it won't happen to me" attitude that seems to be prevalent amongst the younger folks who think youth is equal to invincibility, along with the trend towards people being less responsible these days. If education worked, the problem should be going away, not getting worse.

 

an "it won't happen to me " attitude, is a form of ignorance

 

One of the most horrible forms

Stupidity is permanent
Ignorance is temporary.

 

I took ignorance to mean a lack of education or knowledge, or being uninformed, which now that I look it up, seems to agree with my Websters. I was thinking more along the lines of the people who know better, but don't behave that way. Thinking with the wrong head, if you will.

 

well OK, but
I am 30 and never married
had sex quite a few times, and always used protection
I had the facts, did the math, and knew to protect myself, or expect an 18 year commitment .
thinking with the wrong head ? well keep a condom with you, and its not an issue, you just use it.
the women I have been with believed in protection too(understandably they are the ones taking the most risk)

heres a thought
if you're at the point where you're so hot for sex you do it unprotected, you wouldn't have abstained anyway, so you better have some protection available. yeah the sex urge is strong- its instinctual, so the species continues on

 

Yes, abstinence is the only option that will prevent those things 100% of the time, but used properly, condoms will prevent those things 99.9% of the time.

Actually, come to think of it, even abstinence isn't 100% effective once you factor in incest and rape.

I have one question I'd like to ask the well-intentioned people you reference: Why are you so afraid of birth control methods that will help solve the problems you care about?

 

PLULEEESE tell me you're not serious about that rape/incest comment!

Let me try to refute that. First of all, like sex, for abstinence to happen two people have to participate. If one is not consenting but the other is not abstaining, then abstinence has not happened. Rape and or Incest (sex) has happened. Therefore your statement makes no sense.

To put it another way, abstinence is a lack of sex (sex NOT happening). Rape and incest is a (perverted) form of sex so sex has happened. Since sex has happened, abstinence is mutually excluded at that point.

To answer your question, I'm not afraid of other birth control methods and I support their use. I just want abstinence to be SERIOUSLY included in any discussion about birth control in sex ed.

 

Let me clarify my point. Abstinence is a conscious decision by an individual to not have sex. Rape is a crime which ignores the personal choices of the victim. Therefore, someone practicing abstinence can still get pregnant if their rights are violated, because the choice was taken out of their hands. It doesn't mean that they "fell off the wagon" and stopped practicing abstinence.

In the case of incest, I would agree with you if the sex was consensual. Ick.

Rape and incest are ugly, ugly things that none of us ever want to see happen to a person, but it sometimes does. And when it does, even some anti-abortion folks think an abortion would be acceptable.

On this we agree completely.

 

I'll even advocate retro-active-abortion for the rapist

 

Time to do a little math, like we do in the airplane industry. Most people think 99.9% is a great success rate, but when you have lots of people engaging in this activity, the failure rate of 1 in 1000 will result in many people being affected. For example, for every 1 million people, 1000 will get pregnant or a disease, or both. If you have 100 million people (1/3 of our poplulation) engaging in this behavior, we're talking about 100,000 pregnancies or new cases of diseases (let's call either an "event", to borrow a term from the airplane industry). Multiply that by whatever you would consider a good rate for engaging in sex, pick 50 times per year for round numbers, then multiply by 10% to take into consideration a woman's fertility and some guys are shooting blanks. So, doing the math, we get 500,000 events per year. Granted, I've oversimplified, chosen nice round numbers and left out some factors (like only about 1 in 4 have an STD), but still we're talking large numbers here when you look at the overall effect on our population, not just one individual. I think that's what may concern those people who are afraid of birth control that is supposed to solve problems. In some ways, it's a false sense of security.

Another thing about condoms is that they do not stop the virus that causes venereal warts. What's the big deal about warts? For women, cervical warts are precursors to cervical cancer and if they go undetected (they can be very hard to detect), we're talking about possible removal of the cervix. Can't remember if there's a similar effect on men. Don't ask me for a reference on this one, I don't have it handy, but it probably came from the scientific journals I read at work.

 

Agreed, 99.9% is not 100%, and the remaining .1% can be a very large number when you apply it to the population of a country as large as the United States. No argument there.

Hey, here's another math problem for you: Say that abstinence is 100% effective, but only 20% of the population will practice it. If abstinence is the only birth control method taught in schools--which just happens to be the official position of the Bush administration--<i>then</i> how many unwanted pregnancies would there be?

Bonus question: Would you categorize this new number as <b>way, way, way, way larger</b> than the number calculated from the .1%, or as <b>way, way, way, way, way, way, way, <i>way</i> larger</b> than the number calculated from the .1%?

 

The same can be said for any 'time of use' contraceptive (condoms, creams, etc). Does that make them any less viable? No. Does that make abstinence any less viable? No. The only contraceptives that would protect in that case would be 'constant' forms -- the pill, Norplant, tubal-ligation etc. So should all women go on the pill or get their tubes tied in the off chance that they are raped and also become pregnant? I don't think so but that would be their choice if they wanted to.

Personally I don't think it would be acceptable. I would hope the victim would seriously consider allowing the child to live. Then make the decision that she can live with best. Nothing imposed on her by the larger society. Just her making a difficult personal to the best of her ability.

 

As far as I can tell, we're in agreement.