Time Immortal

In most of the United States, there about 24 abortions performed for every 100 live births that take place. In New York, the ratio rises to 72:100.

This suggests — strongly suggests — that New York women are making use of abortion as their main form of birth control (this comes as no real surprise).

The proposed solution: even more and better access to contraception.

The main concern of the pro-choice advocates? That by using abortion as a primary method of birth control, women may not be using other forms of contraception to full effect, especially condoms…thus leaving themselves potentially more vulnerable to contracting STDs. The over 250 infants butchered daily does not seem to register as a concern.

But strangely, the potentially harmful side effects of procuring an abortion — especially surgical complications — do cause concern. We don’t often see mention of those showing up in print, despite the fact that abortion does pose some very real risks to the health of women, some of which can be catastrophic and fatal in their aftermath.

What the contraception advocates seem to miss is that more and more people don’t seem to care about things like STDs and “protection”. In like manner to how something like obesity (an almost wholly preventable condition) is becoming more and more common (and more of a strain on health care resources), it would seem to be the case that fewer and fewer people are genuinely concerned about things which might pose real and tangible risks to their health. Indeed, the case of obesity is telling, as it is demonstrative of how people will prefer convenience over health — it’s not hard to shed pounds by doing as little as giving up fast food and soda pop.

So too where sex is concerned. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that women in New York, living a fast-paced urban lifestyle in one of the biggest, busiest cities in the world, want convenience everywhere they can get it, including in their birth control. And while the contraception advocates rightly point out that birth control pills are much cheaper than abortion as a method of contraception, those same pills are also more convenient. Even the pill regimens that allow you to miss a day here and there are just not as convenient as an occasional, one-time appointment at a “day surgery” clinic. Ditto condoms…and I’d also be willing to bet that the partners these women take are just as glad that they don’t have to worry about using a condom.

Convenience trumps good sense almost every time, and that’s what we’re seeing in New York, methinks.

And really, as the Curt Jester points out, why are pro-choice advocates actually calling attention to this issue? Why, for them, is it an issue? If it is not considered immoral to obtain an abortion, then is a ratio of 72:100 really any worse than a ratio of 24:100? Is it any better than a ratio of 110:100? Who cares if people are using abortion in a contraceptive capacity, if we’re not supposed to care that people are able to obtain abortions at all?

What an unsurprising thing is this!

How convenient it would have been for liberals if, as predicted by many in the 1980s, AIDS had spread like wildfire among Western heterosexuals. But it didn’t.

It would also have been very convenient if the introduction of condoms had significantly reduced infection in African countries, so the practice of self-indulgent sexual “grazing” could have escaped moral judgment.

But alas for all those non-judgmental AIDS do-gooders: What has worked best and most rapidly to reduce HIV infection among both homosexuals and promiscuous Africans is partner reduction.

…

Following sustained public information campaigns, [Helen Epstein] notes, gay sex with multiple sex partners declined by 60% between 1984 and 1988 in San Francisco. New cases of AIDS plummeted from a peak of 2,400 in 1984 to fewer than 600 in 2000.

And then there’s Uganda, where Epstein’s postdoctoral work at the Uganda Cancer Institute sparked her interest in HIV/AIDS. Even though condom use rose throughout the ’90s all over Africa, the HIV rate also kept climbing — everywhere but Uganda, which had actually begun the decade with the highest rates of new HIV infection. As Fumento noted in his column, the proportion of Ugandans infected with HIV plummeted in the 1990s from 21% to 6%.

When the data was crunched by AIDS researcher Daniel Halperin (as noted in a review of Epstein’s book in the June 23 issue of The Weekly Standard), this startling decline was not found to correspond to the increase in the use of condoms, but rather to the decrease in the proportion of casual sex with numerous partners.

For as much as post-Christian sexual morality is touted as somehow superior to the prudish ways of the West’s Christian past, time and again it seems to be the case that applying some good, old fashioned Christian sensibility to one’s sex life is still the best insurance against contracting all manner of STDs. Few people indeed have gotten sick and died from having remained faithful to one sexual partner for the duration of their adult life, especially when that partner has remained faithful to them as well.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

And if you believe that title, O Reader, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

A recent survey — the first of its kind? — in the U.S. has revealed that one in four women is infected with at least one of four common STDs — human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes or trichomoniasis. Fifteen percent of the infected women apparently have more than one of these four diseases. And — perhaps most shockingly — almost half of all African-American teens surveyed had at least one of the above STDs.

I know that Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist eugenecist who spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies, but I didn’t think that their programs would be so effective at crippling the black population in America!

All facetiousness aside, these results are nothing more than shocking, and should be taken as a scathing condemnation of the ever-more comprehensive sex education programmes that have been fed to schoolchildren since about the 1960s. Unfortunately, the president of Planned Parenthood, one Cecile Richards, has taken the opportunity to say that this study “emphasize[s] the need for real comprehensive sex education.”

It’s not a surprise that Ms. Richards would come out and say as much — Planned Parenthood is a moneymaking operation first and foremost, and both womens’ rights and womens’ health take a back seat to its drive to accumulate profit. But that doesn’t stop Planned Parenthood’s top person from trying to shift the blame away from her own group, its beliefs, and the changes they and others like them have effected in the U.S.

“The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure,” Ms. Richards said, “and teenage girls are paying the real price.”

I highly doubt that there is any teenage girl (or boy) in the United States that has not heard of a condom, and precious few teens of either gender who are unfamiliar with the use thereof. Condom availability is likewise not a problem; you can find them at almost any grocery store or corner drug store these days, in a wide range of sizes, textures, and flavours.

The problem, then, is not that teens haven’t learned enough about condoms and other “protective” measures — it’s that they are choosing, nevertheless, to avoid the use thereof, much as they are choosing to ignore whatever they might be learning about abstinence (since it’s damn hard to get an STD when one is abstaining from sexual activity). Because in spite of all the teaching, in spite of all the warnings, and in spite of the availability and ease of procurement of “protection,” kids still do whatever they damn well please. And no amount of additional education is going to change that.

Back in the barbaric 1950s (and before), STD rates weren’t anywhere near as high as they are now among the teenage population. There weren’t comprehensive sex education programs back then, nor were there condom machines in the bathrooms and racks full of condoms in every food or drug store in town. There was less “openness” about sex, and many people — especially Planned Parenthood employees — would characterize societal attitudes toward sexuality (especially premarital and/or teenage sexuality) as “repressive” (read: dependent on a measure of individual self-control and self-respect).

And yet it is only in our “open”, “enlightened” age that STDs are raging almost out of control in the population, in spite of the availability of condoms and the frankness with which children are taught about sex.

Clearly — obviously — the problem is that our comprehensive, explicit sex education programmes are not nearly comprehensive enough!