Filed under: Christianity, Real Life | Tags: abstinence, pro life, sex ed, teenage pregnancy
My Christian university is big on abstinence-only education. We’ve got several ministry teams that go into the public schools to teach girls about ’staying pure’ till marriage. For some reason, we have no teams that minister to boys on the same issue. I think that’s odd, don’t you? It takes two people to have sex. Anyway, the reason I am mentioning this is because a brand-new study shows that (surprise, surprise) abstinence only sex education doesn’t work (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071107/ap_on_re_us/teen_sex).
I decided to do a Google search for abstinence-only sex education. To my surprise, many of the sites listed in the results were also pro-life advocacy sites. This, my friends, is called irony. Kid sits in abstinence class and is told not to have sex. Kid has sex anyway. Since kid wasn’t taught about birth control or condoms, he or she could get pregnant or contract an STD. In the case of pregnancy, what do you think the girl is going to do? She can keep the baby and say goodbye to any semblence of a normal teenage life. She can experience nine months of hell (ie, pregnancy) and give the baby up for adoption, or she can abort. It seems to me that if you really intend to prevent abortions, it would be in the best interest of your cause to promote the method that is most likely to accomplish that goal.
The fact is that teenagers are going to have sex. Why not teach them to have it safely?
