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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (29546)	2/14/2004 10:00:06 AM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794392

"All sides"? Don't you perceive that there is a faction to whom (the possibility of) getting a few sexually active teenagers to abstain from sex is worth an increase in pregnancies and disease among the non-abstainers? Do you think that that "side" of the issue is going to demand Washington disband the program totally? Here's an interesting claim: "Abstinence is the only 100 percent effective method for avoiding unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV," Essentially, what that means is that an individual priest or nun, er, let's make that nun, is marginally less likely, statistically, to get a STD or pregnant than is a careful, responsible person who has a sex life. (Actually, any negative health effects, including prostate problems, would have to be factored in before concluding there was a net health gain to clergy and other abstainers.) The statement I quoted purports to but doesn't actually address the fact that promoting abstinence at the expense of safe sex education is the precise opposite of "an effective method of avoiding [in the overall population--E] unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV,". That's a good example of ideology at work. It's agenda-driven lies, but the speaker feels sanctimonious in the act of deception. ...despite a lack of evidence that such programs work...Bush would spend $270 million on abstinence-only education, compared with $100 million annually when he took office. I deeply resent this waste of my tax dollars. And the 270 million is the tip of the iceberg: we also pay for the results of such stupidity (for example, the disease; the babies born to dysfunctional people too young to support and raise them responsibly; and, later, the costs of the impact of those now-grown unwanted, ill-raised children on society).