Teenage Sex Sleepovers: Why American Religious Morals CAUSE Abortions

There's a way we could cut abortion rates in half in the United States, but the religious right is against it! Why? Because it requires us to be honest and open about sex with our children. It means we must be pragmatic and admit that teens have sex whether we tell them to or not.

A fascinating report by Advocates for Youth proves what many of us have known intuitively for a long time: America's religion-based "morality" doesn't work. In spite of the good intentions of Nancy Reagan and her followers, the "Just Say No" policy for sex education actually increases pregnancy, abortion, venereal disease and poverty.

Check out these disturbing facts from the Advocates for Youth report:

	United States	Netherlands
Pregnancy per 100,000	72.2	11.8
Births per 1,000 ages 15-19	42.5	4.8
Abortion per 100,000 ages 15-19	19.8	7.8
HIV/STI Rates all adults	0.6%	0.1%
Syphilis cases per 100,000 adults	2.7	1.0
Gonorrhea cases per 100,000 ages 15-19	458.8	13.92
Chlamydia cases per 100,000 ages 15-19	2,862	150.4

If the United States could match the Netherlands' abortion rates, there would be almost 125,000 fewer abortions per year!

You'd think any anti-abortionist would take a look at these numbers and say, "Gosh, let's get on board with their program! It works!" But no, they can't. Why?

Fox News: Helping Young Girls get AIDS

If I believed Satan existed, I'd swear he was running Fox news. Their reporting is worse than lies, and it is killing real children. Today's story:

"Planned Parenthood Pushes Intensive Sex Education for Kids as Young as 10"

Sounds bad, doesn't it? It's grossly misleading, but it's a snappy headline that appeals to their viewers.

But it gets worse. According to Fox, Planned Parenthood "demands that children 10 and older be given a 'comprehensive sexuality education' by governments," that similar reports "advocated teaching masturbation to children as young as 5." And to top it off, Fox quotes a Catholic spokesman asserting that Planned Parenthood's report is financially motivated because they "make money off contraceptives and abortions."

So what's the truth? The real report, which I encourage you to read yourself (PDF), starts by explaining that these ten-year-old girls (and younger) are child brides, sex slaves, and sometimes prostitutes. They live in countries where most girls will have sex, often forced, long before they turn eighteen.

Did you see that anywhere in Fox's article? No, because their goal is not to report news, nor do they care about helping these children.

From Fox's headline, you'd think Planned Parenthood was advocating that a middle-class ten-year-old girl in Chicago should be shown how to use a condom properly. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Planned Parenthood is advocating education for children, because these children are forced, by customs, economics, and poverty, to have sex far too early. Without sex education, many of these girls will die.

For example, from the article:

19-48%

Percent of young women whose sexual initiation is forced.

Or consider this (abridged):

Faha, 15, is 33 weeks pregnant. Married at 13, Faha was made to leave school as her husband would not allow her to attend. "I was sad. I liked learning and seeing my friends." After her baby is born, Faha would like to wait three years [when she'll be 18] before her next child. She will ask the midwife about contraception.

Does that sound to you like Planned Parenthood is pushing sex education on unwilling, naïve children, against their parents' wishes?

Or consider these facts cited in the Planned Parenthood report:

• In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, 40-45% of women age 20-24 were married as children.
• In countries like Bangaladesh, Central African Republic, Chad, Guinea, Mali and Niger, more than 60 % of women were married or entered into a union before their 18th birthday.
• One in 10 births worldwide is to a mother who is still herself a child

In fact, the report is not even about sex and contraception at all, it's about making education and human rights, including sex education and sexual rights, available to all, because educated, healthy people raise healthy families.

So what does Planned Parenthood actually suggest? A pretty reasonable list (this is just a sampling):

• Make age- and culturally-appropriate sex education mandatory in school.
• Enact and enforce bans on child marriage.
• Improve education, especially for girls, so that they aren't forced into prostitution or marriage by economics.
• Create jobs for young people.
• Create community-based support programs for marginalized youths.

Did you get any of that from Fox's article? No, nor did most of their readers. Unfortunately, Fox has an audience of people who never dig past the headlines, so their twisted story will stick.

Thanks to Fox news and others of their ilk, Planned Parenthood will be further villified, funds won't be allocated ... and more 13 year old girls who could have had a chance in life will get AIDS or have three children before they're 18, simply for lack of knowledge. It's a terrible thing, and Fox "News" is helping to make it happen.

Legal abortions save lives

Are the conservatives who oppose abortion committing evil, even by their own standards?

A new Guttmacher Institute report released today demonstrates clearly that the best way to reduce abortions is to improve family planning.

Duh.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud the Guttmacher report – it will add solid science to the debate. But I have to wonder: Why is such a report even necessary?

The irony is that conservatives, in their zeal to prevent abortions, have blocked family planning, thus increasing the number of abortions performed, probably far in excess of the "babies" they've managed to save.

Twenty or thirty years ago, I heard an interview with Dr. Carl Djerassi, the inventor of the first birth-control pill. He was pro-abortion too, but when someone criticized him on his beliefs, he said something like, "The thing we all agree on is the hope that one day no abortions will be neccessary." He went on to explain that birth control was the solution to the abortion problem. If families and women have access to effective family-planning services, abortions can become a thing of the past.

So ironically, the conservative agenda that opposes abortion and withholds other family-planning services, causes abortions to increase, exactly the opposite of their intention. If the Bush administration had simply funded family-planning services worldwide, and ignored the fact that some money was being used for abortions, they could have reduced the total number of abortions, surely a good thing from anyone's point of view.

Unfortunately, there is a terrible connection between AIDS and abortions, too. It's been shown time and again that the most effective way to prevent AIDS is with condoms. Abstinence programs are 100% ineffective, and in some cases I've heard they're even counterproductive.

The Bush administration's knee-jerk opposition to abortion caused them to withhold funds from places like equatorial Africa. The direct, measurable result of that is a terrible increase in the spread of AIDS. Even if you believe the human soul is injected by God at the moment of conception, and even if you believe that many babies were saved from abortion, more people are dying in the end, from illegal abortions, starvation, and AIDS.

It's the typical head-in-the-sand attitude we see so often from religious conservatives. They get on their soap boxes and yell about some commandment from God, without ever considering the real-life consequences of their actions.

If evil is defined as that which harms and kills, the Republican leaders who set America's international family-planning policy for the last decade or so were among the most evil in history. Literally millions of people around the world today have AIDS, simply because the United States withdrew family-planning money from countries that allowed abortions at their medical clinics.

The Pope is a Murderer

There's no beating around the bush on this one. The Pope's stance on condoms is immoral, stupid, and will directly cause many thousands, perhaps millions, of deaths in Africa and other parts of the world. By declaring, once again, that condoms are immoral and forbidden to Catholics under all circumstances, the Pope is writing the death warrants for untold innocent men, women and children around the world.

How can a man who is sworn to celibacy possibly understand real human sexuality?

How can he be so totally disconnected from reality that he doesn't see the incredible human suffering he is causing? How can the Pope, in the year 2009, not see what is right in front of his face? Social scientists have proved that condom use is one of the very best ways to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, and they have shown convincingly that abstinence programs have no usefulness whatsoever.

The modern Roman Catholic Church claims to be in touch with science. That's pure BS. They claim that science is responsible for the "what and how" and the Church is responsible for the "why". So, Pope, answer this: Why? Is your horror of sex just for its own sake so complete that you're willing to condemn innocent babies to die for it? Is sex so inherently sinful that it is only redeemed by the possibility of babies? So sinful that it is a capital crime?

Will the Pope go to the hospitals himself to watch the children die who might have grown up happy and healthy, but for his idiotic proclamations about the "morality" of using condoms?

I usually try to respect (though disagree) with other religious viewpoints, but today the Roman Catholic Church makes me sick. It is immoral to the core.

Atheism's Toxic Effects in the Abortion Debate

Ok, I admit it, the headline is deliberately provocative to get your attention. Vjack over at Atheist Revolution wrote an excellent blog, Religion's Toxis Effects in the Abortion Controversy, in which he demonstrates that religion turns honest discourse about an important controversy into black-and-white good-versus-evil mudslinging.

But my provocative title is apropos to my thesis: There is a solution to the Abortion controversy, but we'll never reach it until we stop trying to debate the abortion issue. It's hopeless. Atheists tend to dismiss the legitimate and heartfelt beliefs of religious people in the abortion debate. These are not a bunch of nut cases with silly beliefs; they are our friends and neighbors, and they honestly believe that abortion is murder. As Atheists, we can see that life and the human "soul" are purely physical phenomena, and it's hard for us to take the religious position seriously. But if we aren't careful, we risk getting into a pointless debate that will distract us from real progress.

The only solution to the abortion controversy is to eliminate the need for abortion completely. Years ago, I heard Professor Carl Djerassi, inventor of the birth-control pill, interviewed on the radio, and he put it best: "Wouldn't it be better if we lived in a world where women have full access to birth control, where no woman ever needs to seek an abortion again?" (Paraphrased, it was probably 25 years ago!)

Almost everyone in the United States, Atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Baha'i, you name it, agrees to a remarkable extent on one topic: Birth control is moral, and is a woman's right. Even the majority of Roman Catholics agree; they think the Pope and official Catholic ban on birth control is simply wrong, and that the Pope is out of touch with reality.

I propose that Atheists, and religious people of a more liberal nature who accept that abortion isn't murder, should stop engaging in the futile debate about when the human soul is created, and instead focus on birth control.

A tiny minority of ultra-conservative religious leaders have a monsterous influence on United States domestic and foreign policy. Their conservative views are preventing distribution of birth-control pills, condoms, medication, education and many other services that are desperately needed, here and abroad.

Right now, regions of Africa have stunnning and horrifying rates of AIDS infections, in some cases 25% of the population is infected and will die. These are poor countries to start with; the cost of caring for these people as they sicken and die, and the resulting explosion of orphans, will overwhelm all economic and social progress for decades. It is a tragedy greater than most of the greatest plagues in human history.

And it could have been prevented with an aggresive campaign that included sex education, condom distribution, and medical aid. Sociologists warned of this impending disaster years before it happened, but because the solution included birth control and abortion rights, the funds for birth control, condoms and education were withheld. This completely preventable plague was left to run wild, and will ultimately result in hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide.

So, let's start engaging our religious friends (and those we may not consider friends, too) in a debate about birth control and sex education. Let's break the stranglehold the ultraconservative churches, led by the Pope himself, have on American and world politics. Let's make it so that every woman in Africa has access to condoms, so that we can stop the AIDS epidemic. Let's give every teenager in the world a reality-based sex education (to use vjack's term), so that no girl ever has to have an abortion again. Let's teach young couples everywhere how to be responsible, and plan their families, so that every child born will be greeting by happy, excited parents who planned the event and look forward to raising a happy and healthy family.

The abortion debate is a dead end. We have to hold the line, keep abortion rights from being eroded, but that's it. But the birth-control debate can be meaningful, productive, and have a far greater impact on the health and well being of everyone in the world.

Tags: abortion birth-control aids religion christian christianity atheist atheism africa epidemic