A Trump administration promoting "abstinence-only" sex education?
You can't make this stuff up.
And yet it is libertine Trump's unflinching support for this ideological idiocy that keeps the religious right firmly in his camp.
How heartbroken they will be when he and Pence are shown the door (with Trump likely being shown it much earlier) and every one of these policies is reversed by a Democratic president in 2021, as if they never existed.
What profit a group of religious reactionaries if they temporarily gain the whole world but lose their soul - not to mention what little respect the rest of us had for them?
4
This article must be a spoof from the Onion or something - there is no way this country is that stupid and is regressing that much. Have we all been drinking Flint water? Lead poisoning led to the Mad Hatter, and I'm feeling like Small Alice.
10
Sex has taken a horrible hit with these creepy vile creatures who do it, deny doing it, pay hush money to their Republican lovers who make it sound like some miserable chore. My guess is no need to codify their sex negative guilt laden ideology. Just watching these guys in action probably has made many people swear off sex. At least for the short term.
4
GOP hypocrisy knows no bounds. All the philanderers and adulterers, pedohpiles and grabbers, now will say with a straight face to others to not have sex unless you’re married.
It would be the ultimate in farce if it weren’t without such serious repercussions.
25
Abstinence programs are like trying to hold back the tide. Sex is a natural part of human life. It is beautiful and wonderful, attempts to say it is not are doomed to failure, because once someone has had sex, they quickly figure out they have been lied to. Now you can throw all sorts of guilt and shame around sex, and if you do you get our current culture and the Catholic Church.
Much of our crime would go away if we would recognize that there is nothing shameful about the human body and a healthy sex life is part of a healthy human life. We seem to have our priorities backwards, it is OK to show people getting blown to bits, and mass shootings are accepted, even made part of the games our kids play, but an event that celebrates life and loving is forbidden or labeled "Porn." We are a seriously messed up culture.
11
Dr. Joy Brown used to ask parents who called into her radio show, wanting to know how to keep their children abstinent, "Did you ask your parents' permission the first time you had sex? Or any time for that matter?" I think that says it all.
6
Absintance? That's something Trump knows well.
8
It looks like every backward, deranged notion from the depths of human ignorance has a place in this administration's agenda. The idea seems to be to use the values of a pseudo-world which has never existed outside rhetoric to dictate policy.
There is no reason to believe this "policy" could possibly achieve anything at all. This is yet another attack on the poor, and yet again for no rational reason or even slightly credible purpose.
Consider:
People are going to stop having sex because the government says so?
What constitutional right does government have to dictate people's sex lives, let alone the right to have or not have a child?
Then there are the dollar values. It costs all that money to promote a ridiculous, impossible, purely rhetorical approach to contraception?
You might as well be living in the Puritan days, where morality was a weapon, not a bona fide value. When a real government finally gets back in charge, you might want to make deranged policies affecting people's private lives illegal. Add an Amendment, if necessary, but put an end to the maniacal mythology of "morality" being defined by sex.
14
In 2008 in my rural high school, we were only taught abstinence. Most of my classmates were already engaging sexual activity in one way or another at this point in time. As a whole, we would have benefited from learning about protection such as condoms and oral contraceptives. We were taught not to "lie down naked with people of the opposite sex" and to avoid sexual activity. We were not taught about various forms of birth control and how they can be effective in preventing pregnancy and STIs. Out of the graduating class of 50, we had 5 young women pregnant or already mothers and a severe outbreak of HPV and other STIs. Teaching abstinence only does not work and it is not beneficial to young adults and teens. Teens and young adults need access to information that can help us learn to be sexually responsible adults. It is about sexual responsibility, not abstinence.
15
This is just a taste of the Christian theocracy and return to Middle Ages (except with cell phones, computers, and cars) that Mike Pence and the rest of the modern Republican parry have dreamed of creating. Reality has no place in the delusional world of belief-based politics.
17
Seems like we never move on. Years ago, the federal government supported the development of a variety of abstinence-only curricula and then pushed their use in schools. A local minister pushed the Teen Aid abstinence-only curriculum in my local school, with the support of a school board member and another local minister (who was later majorly embarrassed). Fortunately, I was able to connect with others who had encountered this in their schools, so I got a good understanding of this particular curriculum pretty quickly.
Mixed in with a few good elements was the kind of disinformation cited here. It was all based on scare tactics -- not exactly a great strategy with teens -- but it went way out there. When I got no support from the school board, I ended up in letters-to-the-editor mode. Even strong supporters had a hard time stomaching a video in which a kid asks what happens if you have sex before marriage and is told by a teacher, "then you die."
The greatest advice I got was to let supporters talk -- and even encourage them to. The real agenda quickly becomes apparent. And do educate yourself on the lies and deceptions in a particular curriculum, so you can share them with the community. Most will be appalled.
Bottom line, you may or may not be able to control what the feds fund, but you can remain vigilant in your own community, and make sure everybody is very clear what they are signing up for when they adopt one of these curricula.
6
When sane people don't vote, bad people get elected. I have reached the point where, when people go off about "how bad" a candidate Hillary Clinton was, I have trouble resisting the urge to paste them one in the snoot. Fortunately, these priggish types, ever stroking their own egos and misplaced ideas of superiority, rarely say such things out loud in public, at least where I can hear them. I often say little prayers of gratitude that I don't live where people do. And I'm really fed with above-it-all types preaching about "partisanship." The difference between the parties is real, it is substantive, and the difference has an impact, sometimes tragic, on peoples' lives far beyond choosing which candidate one "likes" more or picking a side to root for.
8
Mr. Trump has no unifying ideals except his own advancement. He does not need to be moral. Or internally consistent (even imperfectly so). Or--heh-heh--concerned about the common good.
And right now, Trump thinks jumping on this particular bandwagon is going to promote his own advancement.
AND he's probably right.
3
Decrease abortions? offer women cheap local shame free reproductive health care their entire reproductive lives, and beyond. Teen pregnancy way down right now, and Obamacare mandated insurance covers contraceptions and affordable healthcare-- Obama, savior of both sides, pro choice and pro-life. Pro choice is pro life.
Also, the zealots in churches should pay close attention to those in their congregations, and promote abstinence. A great idea-for a church.
Increase abortions? make sure no one has facts, make people ashamed, make people travel out os state or out of country for abortions, make sure you tell people "just say no!" to sex-- that ought to work.
8
Unfortunately this report is not surprising with this disfunctional administration.
This is Trump placating his evangelical base keeping the uneducated bible thumpers securely within the fold.
Anti science and anti female reproductive rights is par for the course and fovetails with the anti science and anti environmental protection agenda.
The resistance has to mobilize the vote in November and 2020.
3
This directly creates a class system of access. Any person of means will access birth control and or safe/timely abortion if needed.
This is not a science issue, it is a Christian religion and male dominated control issue of others.
GOP members claim promote 'moral' behavior +protect unborn children but fails to live according to their stated standards.
Too many stories of power based predatory sexual behavior and pressured abortions of convenience to find this non scientific stance to be credible.
+agreed education and elimination of shame = healthier relationships
4
Being raised Catholic, there was an old joke about what you call couples practicing the rhythm method, parents! I knew that joke when I was in 7th grade. I'm 60 now and the joke that was funny then is not funny to those who didn't want children. Are we really still having this debate? Studies show that providing teens with real information about birth control reduces both unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Now we go back to a failed abstenance policy being pushed by an administration led by what can be described as a shameless pig.
6
This "abstinence only" policy is another disinformation campaign, basically against birth control, not for "life, "morality", or any other high-sounding purpose. It's not surprising at all, given the history of right-wing politics, and the takeover of the Republican Party by rogue extremists.
During the 2016 presidential election campaign the Trump team hired Russian operatives to run a disinformation campaign against the the Democrats, and used voter suppression to basically steal an election. Before, during and after the election, there has been an avalanche of lies from the Republican Party. This Republican policy against birth control is just one more Big Lie on top of the mountain of lies this rogue extremist Party has piled up.
4
Contraception, abortion and sex for the rich.
For the poor, no contraception, no abortion and, therefore, no sex
8
Abstinence is only the best solution, as a teenager, when your parents and school teachers are too ignorant to be able to explain to you how to cultivate love for your own body and love for that of a partner, in the fullest sense of the word "love", AND if you happen to not have any teenagers friends who can introduce you to this absolutely wonderful - and often deeply spiritual - human activity either.
That's the only situation where it's best to wait until you meet someone you love AND who has the experience and patience to initiate you himself (and preferably BEFORE you decide to marry him or not, as having perfectly compatible sexual desires is essential in order to obtain an honest and lasting marriage, and the only way to figure it out is to have sex, and have a lot of it ... ).
In all other situations, there's absolutely no reason, since birth control exists, why teenagers should keep this crucial part of who they are totally underdeveloped and ignored for years and years, rather than integrate it into the passionate journey of becoming a thriving, deeply loving and responsible, respectful adult - and, in case that's what you want, parent.
Men who want to use the power of the government to impose abstinence and men who believe the false notion that a "real man" has to regularly have sex without love and pays/forces women to have sex with him (or has to avoid them for fear of assaulting them), simply never had the chance to discover what real sex is.
37
Terribly sorry to write that some women told me that they had been molested by their fathers. This ruined their lives. In one case I met the mother of one of these women and felt that she had probably waited, etc, like that older generation, and might not have been compatible with the father. Always those fathers)and possibly other relatives) said their daughters had lied. I also heard that stepfathers were sometimes guilty of this behavior. Men who are asking for abstinence are still trying to control women and not only are losing that battle but will never win it as women are thinking for themselves now and discussing these problems with each other.
8
What on earth is up with these elderly men pushing an agenda of “condoms don’t work, just pull out”? Are you serious? The only explanation for the GOP obsession with sex ed and abortion rights has got to be insecurity, right?
2
It used to be said that there was no one so righteous as a reformed prostitute. We can safely put that old saw one to the side, for now we have a new standard: There is none so righteous as an unrepentant "john" with the title President of the United States.
7
Vote people vote in 2018 and 2020. Vote as if your lives and our country is in danger because it is. And see to it a good sex education is available to all students starting in 5th grade.
5
What better leader than Donald Trump to lead us into this la la land! He is of course the most abstinent President we've ever had.
3
A few years from now, historians will point to this week as the moment when China’s military crossed the line by placing missiles on artificial islands in the South China Sea.
And when the historians examine the headlines and opinion section of the New York Times to understand how the US was so blindsided, they will discover only articles and editorials about the peccadilloes of President Trump.
3
The irony! The irony!
But when I consider his sexual behaviors and hypocrisy, "The horror, the horror" immediately comes to mind.
1
Trump's personal Vietnam was sexually transmitted disease. I have a wealthy, male, Ph.D. educated cousin that voted for this horrid man because he would appoint judges to overturn abortion. Ask my cousin how many poor disadvantaged children he has adopted or fostered. The answer is Zero.
8
I am in full support of abstinence.
This is one policy in which I am confident will be chucked into the trash by states and schools alike as abstinence-only education is a tried and true failure. Even conservative bumpkin towns know that promoting abstinence increases pregnancy rates. This seems more symbolic a statement than anything else, I just don’t see the administration succeeding here (hopefully).
The fact that its being issued by Trump is so laughable I cant wait to see what MAD magazine writes about it
1
The important question of whether or not to engage in sexual intercourse does not always lend itself to categorical answers. It's a little like eating- one can overeat (bad) but one cannot "abstain" from eating altogether. Likewise, the concept of "abstinence" with regard to sexual intercourse is pretty idiotic. Hard and fast rules simply do not cover every human situation. It seems that whenever religious conservatives are faced with a complex question, a question whose truly ethical answers occur along a continuum, they seem to fail miserably. Let's give people (over a certain age of course) the tools to make sensible autonomous decisions when it comes to their own bodies.
3
Donald Trump preaching abstinence.
Laughing so hard, milk coming out my nose.
4
Abstinence seems to be well practiced by Mr Trump but not of everything. As we know, Mr Trump abstains from alcohol and from rationality but he does not seem to abstain from extra-marital sex. His advertising for sexual abstinence is therefore a hypocrisy.
4
Condoms and pills don’t prevent sexual transmitted disease (STD). Abstinence does. Sex is for procreation – to make babies, not to prove that women don’t have to love. Schools should teach how to save and plan for a happy and productive future, not how to be promiscuous losers. Let the schools teach biology and let loving people teach morality.
2
The trump administation is another of trump’s children out of wedlock. The chaos, corruption, turnover,non- government, and the rash, reckless, thoughtless and destructive decision making is an everyday affair. Climate change is a real threat. Trump pulled out of paris and has gutted the EPA . Trump, a xenophobe, racist and islamophobe, hates immigrants of color and muslims. During his campaign in 2016 he made racist comments about hispanics(‘thugs from across the border’) and colored people(‘we should let in more europeans’). These comments were made during a campaign speech in california. The hope was that america would roundly reject him but now the GOP is trump’s party. He has boasted about his big red nuclear button. He clearly is hiding collusion with putin and russia during the election. Trump has not disclosed his taxes and many fraudulent schemes like trump university are hidden in his taxes. Trump has no ideas besides overturning every obama policy and treaty- the affordable care act, financial regulations to prevent another economic meltdown, fairly taxing the ultrawealthy snd the iran nuclear deal. He has championed police brutality, towards blacks in particular. School children are less safe than ever-trump has left public safety to the NRA.Trump has a history of sex abuse and misogyny. Anybody else who committed the same criminal offenses would be hit with big penalties and be in prison
1
To be fair, every man who votes for this should have a vasectomy.
7
It's all about controlling women. It's never about anything else, ever.
6
Donald Trump's sex life and his administrations stance on sex education are not a contradiction. If you are rich and powerful and a man, you can have all the sex you want. Everybody else can't have any sex until they have gotten married.
1
"Spreads misinformation"? Rather, delivers to Americans the benefits of "Alternate Facts"!!
1
Money walks. Time to start talking the cost to the country for curtailing birth publicly supported birth control programs. How much will it cost to raise an army of unwanted kids. No sane person believes that abstinence is going to come back in popularity. Have any of these advocates met a fifteen year old boy?
2
Oh, the irony! So strong it makes my teeth hurt. A president who has an attorney on call to pay off all the women he's slept with wants abstinence-only programs? Wake up, America. Shake it off and wake up.
5
Ah, yes...."Abstinence Only"... if ONLY the president himself had set an example by practicing what he'd preach.
2
This is not a “pro life” administration. This is a “pro birth” administration. As cuts to SNAP, education, and health care have proven, this administration doesn’t give a flying fig about a child once it is born. Starvation , squalor, and poor health is a suitable punishment for both mother and child who don’t conform to the demands of these old, white, men. As an “old, white, woman” let me add, it didn’t work in 1970 and it won’t work now.
6
This is the anti-reality approach to sex suppression favored by the Pence crowd. It is surprising they have not come up with some perverted variation of the "Scarlet Letter" to shame those who act like normal human beings and have sex. The abstinence only approach is another reason why we are supposed to have a clear separation of church and state.
3
This policy of abstinence only is further evidence of the perverse marriage between the Trump Administration and Evangelical Christians. The offspring of such an intercourse are lies, misrepresentation of the truth and a rise in unplanned children. It would be best for our nation if they abstained from each other, dissolved their union, and left he rest of us alone.
3
Thank you to the New York Times for bringing this to the public's attention. As I travel, promoting my recently launched book OOPS! Tales From A Sexpert (dealing with this subject), I run into people who are unaware of the destructive forces at work in Washington, working to destroy EFFECTIVE comprehensive sexuality education programs and blocking access to vital reproductive health care services. This issue is central to our nation's well-being, and Title X is one of the most important and successful programs we have as a nation. Until we are ALL able to learn accurate information and access the services we need to successfully space our pregnancies, social justice will be unattainable.
3
Thank you for this.
So opioid crisis followed by teen pregnancy crisis with less Medicaid funding?....
More insanity.... and when will Congress move to impeach??
Very cruel.
1
With 18 wives and counting among them Donald Trump, Steve Mnichin, Wilbur Ross, Rudy Giuliani and Larry Ludlow have never tried abstinence. Their hypocrisy is magnified by untold mistresses and paramours. There is nothing new beyond their moral degenerate judgment casting the first stone.
5
The irony of Trump, of all people, pushing abstinence...
So, is the WH press corps going to start screaming questions at Trump about this as he walks across the lawn & comes over to talk about Rudy? Or, ask Sarah Sanders?
I doubt it.
1
We are confident that Pope Michael (Pence) and his "holier than thou" band of merry men are at the core of this abstinence nonsense. Of course the Christians want more babies born in wedlock so they can be converted at conception, or at 43 days old, when they are "thinking" about Christian dogma. Obviously these "adults" are not concerned with disease, economic justice or a woman's god-given rights to control their own bodies.
Trump is pushing abstinence only?! That's the best laugh I've had all morning!
4
Sexual reproduction has been around for at least a billion years. This ancient instinct is at its strongest in teens and young adults. Good luck asking them to resist a force of nature. And when a massive earthquake triggers a tsunami, go ahead and ask it to abstain from coming ashore. You will have just as much success.
3
It's up to Dear Leader to now lead on this. He should go around the country talking to teen groups about how great abstinence worked for him.
2
This policy epitomizes the Trump-PENCE administration, where narcissism meets fanaticism, bankrolled by Koch.
3
Don't do as I do, just do as I say.
Glad to hear the philanderer-in-chief telling the rest of us minions how to run our sex lives. He really is our "fallen angel." Lucky for me while growing up, I have seen trump's antics/bankruptcies/shady business deals and don't ever buy into his logic. I served, he didn't.
2
Trump is pandering to the Christians who support him, he will continue to throw them bones for their support. They will continue to lose credibility by supporting him.
2
Go out and vote!
Please encourage all young people to understand the issues and to vote in accordance with the world they want to live in.
3
"They use innocuous sounding terms like “sexual risk avoidance” and “healthy relationships” because they know “abstinence” can sound harsh and retrograde."
Just as the abortionist lobby uses innocuous sounding terms like "reproductive choice" because they know "abortion on demand" repels people.
Because abstinence and monogamy has been such an important part of the president's life.
3
There is no cure for insistent stupidity and it’s negative and costly consequences. And insistent stupidity is what we have in this administration. Not just in the question of sex ed but in every aspect of its “governing” which insists that the blind hand of the free market works best in all choices. So long as Republicans insist on medieval thinking we will be visited by medieval results.
1
When you write "made unscientific assertions", could you not simply write "told lies" instead. After all, that is what your phrase means and is what happened.
Please start calling "unscientific assertions" for what they are: lies.
1
That one is … pulled straight out of play book of traditional Chinese people! I’m considering suing them for copy rights violations only!
The supporting evidence is overwhelming for the truth of this old one-liner: “What do they call people who use the rhythm method of birth control?” “Parents.”
3
Honestly, the political culture in the US is too strange to be believed. I know Trump is courting the hard right conservative vote, but abstinence? Seriously? From an administration led by a man who behaves like a sex craving teenager, even now when he is an old man? I guess it is like his support for the military after being too cowardly to serve in it himself. Good policy for the little people but not for an elite such as Trump. Ordinary Americans see him as their champion when in reality he is their very worst enemy. Unbelievable.
117
Some years ago, I worked on a federal grant on teen mothers. When the grant was over, the group I was working with got one on pregnancy prevention. It turned out to be abstinence only. I resigned from the project. As a psychologist, it seemed to me that I would have been in violation of professional ethics for participating in something that was so clearly contradicted by the evidence. We've been seeing teen pregnancy and abortion rates dropping nationally; those effects appear to be due to sex education in the schools and easy access to contraception. If the Trump people succeed, you have to expect those rates to go back up. It's ironic that the same people who are screaming about abortion are also opposed to the interventions that make it less frequent. It appears to me that we have a substantial segment of the voting public who are not capable of dealing with facts, and they won the last election.
1
The first paragraph. Read it and weep.
1
We have repeatedly seen that even high ranking Vatican's or Boston's,etc.Church officials failing the flesh test thing.A prominent Islamic Scholar in France too had an F like HW and others.So, abstinence is quite a challenge 4 earthlings.Now,when use of stimulants, from the relatively milder Khat (ubiquitous in this country ) to Pot, the highly addictive ones Opiod and others are added S.restraint becomes extremely difficult.Add to that Sexual visual stimulants that makes sexual craving omnipresent.However,if the young are somehow made to see that reaching as high as their intellectual potential will allow brings a lasting satisfaction they will be inclined to self preservation and adopt safe way of practicing sex.So,sound sex Ed,awareness of getting ready for sustaining economically a family before having a child, in other words availability of Fam planning knowledge and assistance are critical.For ex. in Sex Ed not all kisses are equal, the more pleasurable type could also be the safer one.In the Majority of families in Af + Asia those who end up a prey to Human traffickers or part of refugee congestion come from families where parents have a lot more children than they can afford to raise properly.The Fam planing or PP related policies of Pres.s Clinton+O.+GWB's era had it right.Unworkable formula regarding handling of Sexual proclivity driven acts aggravates the epidemic and Economic global phenomena and is ruinous,to a various degree, to Quality of life everywhere.TMD.
2
I've always figured people like Valerie Huber, Tom Price, and their ilk, who promote abstinence only and sexual ignorance, just don't like sex. Hopefully the rest of us who do like to get lucky aren't going to put up with this nonsense.
3
Meanwhile the spear carrier for this abstinence only message had unprotected sex with a porn actress and probably with every other women who had sex with him. Just remember that his "Vietnam" was avoiding STDs.
Please don't call the loons pushing this agenda "Christians" -- they are not that -- call them what they are "the Evangelical Ignorant."
5
Let's cut to the chase. Trump's (very aptly named) base are those very holier-than-us, so-called christians of either the evangelical or RC persuasion who believe we'll achieve heaven on earth when all abortions (except, of course, those for the wealthy who won't admit to the procedure) are illegal and all gays, lesbians, and the rest of the non-hetero crowd can either "convert" or be burned at the stake—except, of course, their wealthy, conservative outliers. He can do anything he wants, except fund an abortion (too bad his mother didn't get one, eh?) and talk about "civil rights" as long as he works for their two desiderata.
Donald Trump is not only a mysoginist, a hypocrite and a sexual predator who’d date his ‘hot’ (his words) daughter if she weren’t his daughter (translate: a total creep), he’s evil, in my opinion. Jumping on the Republican bandwagon on policies we know he doesn’t even personnally embrace, this man, if you can call him that, will do anything nefarious just because it is within his power. I cannot wait until he is out of office and hopefully, behind bars. Mr. Muehler, keep up the good work. Same to the NYT editorial board. And to everyone: PLEASE VOTE IN NOVEMBER.
3
Ask Bristol Palin how well abstinence works. Come to think of it, ask her twice.
1
Welcome to Gilead.
2
Why not bring back chastity belts while we're at it.
1
The corrupt cynics who launch these violent antitruth programs have no interest in their veracity or utility. Ther only goal is to stir up a few glassy eyed pitchfork wielders
2
Wow, how much hatred can one third of the nation
spew on the rest of us? And it is not as if they
themselves follow any of the ridged and inhuman
rules they demand for everyone else. I guess
real sex education will have to go underground
till the representatives of these hypocrites are voted out.
Are the Koch brothers behind all this attempt
to smother our sexuality? I mean it is a form
of diminishing our powers. The elite do look on
us as slaves and need to curb us anyway they can.
Specially females. It probably drives them wild
to witness us happy. They obviously cannot
achieve that state themselves or they would not
be needing to bleed us dry financially, shame
our glorious sexuality, poison our air and water
and food, murder us via the endless and many
wars, and let us not forget their bestest friends
the NRA and opioid manufacturers and the
doctors who over prescribe. Oh and the
machinations of the bought Republicans and
the mostly bought Democrats. Gee deck seems
stacked against us. But in the past oligarchs and
despots and royalty have not fared so well when
the masses, the sleeping giant awakens.
1
Handmaid's Tale gets closer every day under this hypocrite regime of corrupt swindlers.
This is so ridiculous, because throughout the decades members of the U.S. Congress, as well as the presidents themselves, have not been known to practice abstinence or to turn down an enticing sexual opportunity. One set of standards for the rulers, and another set for the subjects, Hmm?
It is especially ludicrous when we think about Donald Trump's know behavior, extensively documented by the seamier side of the press, with his encouragement and enthusiastic participation (re: some of those repellent interviews with the equally repellent Howard Stern).
These people are blatant hypocrites, and think the rest of us are too stupid to notice.
Did any of these federal appointees ever take a biology class or are they just ignorant, religious ideologues?
2
How is it that an 'advanced' country like these United States can be so antiquated, so backward-thinking, disregarding effective and efficient ways to avoid unwanted pregnancies, especially unjust on women...when we men are co-responsible, by not using proven methods beyond abstinence? And this 'abstinence-only coverage, demanded by a shameless sexually promiscuous thug called Trump? This is the height of hypocrisy...if not stupidity.
1
For Trump, it has always been “do as I say, not as I do”. Sex for me, none for you. Money for me, none for you. Jail for you, none for me. He bilks the taxpayers out of millions of dollars with his golf trips to Mar-a-Lago, reaps obscene amounts of money from his hotel in DC, canoodles with porn stars, and publicly fondles his ego on Twitter and Fox News in front of millions of people, yet the people in his Cabinet who do the same are dead meat (Scott Pruitt will go eventually, too). And then we have a grown man, our Vice President, creepily calling his wife “Mother”, who would be a thousand times worse in pushing through his rabid social agenda. The two of them belong together in a jail cell, where they can practice what they preach for the rest of their lives.
This effort is misguided & ill-informed on a good day, & President Trump's own promiscuity & adultery--as with so many other contradictory aspects of his life & career--pretty much subverts any credibility that he & hiis administration would have on this subject.
1
Considering Donald Trumps past, all I can say is hypocrite.
Or is he revising his behavior to go with this new program? He only has sex with his wife when he wants to create another child.
Another form of GOP genocide by malign neglect in action. What are they hoping for--hopeless, futureless youths who will be fodder for either wars or Soylent Green?
I guess even evangelicals are willing to make a deal with the devil if it gets them what they want!
1
hmmm.
coming from trump... really?
Abstinence is an insult not only to nature but to God. Nature seems to go overboard to ensure the survival of the species - all species. The vast majority of eggs and sperm production among all species is quite effectively wasted as no offspring result. Celibacy may be a "choice" for homo sapiens but it certainly is not favored by nature nor, might it be argued, is it favored by the God of love (who is also the God of life). He made us what we are - abstinence seems to imply God made a mistake when he created hormones.
Because homo sapiens, unlike their mammalian cousins, are always horny we do have a need to be responsible when spreading our seed and society has a right to regulate certain aspects of it. Age and consent are to be considered. However, to preach, let alone attempt to observe abstinence, is to force people into an unnatural manner of handling their sexuality. Abstinence is not only unworthy it is foolish, cruel and just plain stupid!
Sexual education courses, in addition to providing the "technical aspects" of sex should teach the moral responsibilities of mutual consent, respect for partners and the need to prevent births that are not wanted. Birth control is not the same as sexual abstinence although abstinence can be a form of birth control.
1
A 2004 report??? Come on NYT Editorial Board. If you want to criticise a position, yay! But put a little more rigor into your fact finding than something more than a decade stale.
2
Let's see, people - make that women - are supposed to remain abstinent while corporations use sex to sell everything from liquor to laundry soap. We have always been just plain screwed up on the subject of sex. We are still subject to the oxymoron that sons are supposed to sow their wild oats while daughters are supposed to be virgins. Stupid.
This is what you get when you have an evangelical Christian movement that doesn't include God. We're starting the Pence presidency early...these "evangelicals" have no shame...sad.
1
The Bible clearly teaches that having sexual intercourse outside of marriage is a sin against God. People of faith have no choice but to practice and teach abstinence .
1
The Bible also explicitly writes that if someone steals an apple, religious leaders should cut off his hand.
Nothing indicates that the God of the Bible wants his followers to read and apply sacred texts literally, rather than studying it in order to find its core message (love, justice and charity) and then invent ways to adapt this message to always evolving societies.
2,500 years ago, primitive tribes believed that using violence and abstinence were the only ways to obtain a more or less civilized society.
Today, we know that they were wrong. So today, we have a choice, and each individual is responsible for his own choice.
Will we continue to hate our bodies, or will we cultivate loving and exploring and accepting them, all while cultivating loving and respecting others?
It's absurd to want the government to decide these things in our place, as the GOP is trying to do today.
And of course, it's even more absurd to want to impose ONE particular interpretation of ONE kind of sacred texts by law onto the entire American people.
3
"The administration is promoting a “just say no” approach to adults as well as to teenagers."
My hypocrisy/irony meter just went off scale and exploded. It is hard to imagine any group can have so little self-awareness that they would promote abstinence when their leader is a satyr.
"Disinformation is at the center of this agenda." in the Trump Era, you could have stopped there...
1
So Trump is peddling abstinence, no surprises here.
Benefits Of Abstinence
Abstinence is a great choice for so many reasons. Here is a list of the most importance reasons to practice abstinence, and why sexual abstinence is a 'big deal'.
Sexual abstinence is the only 100% guarantee that you won’t become a mommy or a daddy until you’re ready. (No stretch marks, no crying babies, no poopy diapers – until you’re ready!)
Sexual abstinence is the only 100% guarantee that you won’t get an STD. (While latex condoms can help prevent some STDs, they are not nearly 100% effective. Condoms don’t prevent against HPV, gonorrhoea, or genital herpes among many other STDs)
Having sex with an individual has psychological repercussions. If there is a breakup, increased chances of depression and unstable mental health are higher.
Practising sexual abstinence is a great way to get to know your boundaries and develop a stronger relationship emotionally and spiritually with the person you are dating.
You won’t need to hide anything from your parents or your friends, which takes a lot of pressure off your back and helps strengthen your relationship with them.
You will know that the person you are with, is with you for YOU. Your personality, your interests, and all of the great things about you besides sexuality.
Statistics show that teens who practise sexual abstinence are less likely to have depression, less likely to attempt suicide, less likely to live in poverty as adults.
1
The irony here is so sharp that it borders on parody. The profligate and promiscuous Donald Trump is forcing abstinence on the rest of us while he pays off porn stars and Playboy models to keep quiet about his relationships with them? It's no surprise. Trump owes everything to his evangelical supporters. This program is his payoff to them in the most public and venal way possible. To those of you who voted for Trump or Stein or Sanders or didn't vote at all--welcome to the America that you have created. I hope that you enjoy it and so do your children and grandchildren.
2
Trump ushering a "New Era of Abstinence" is a joke of Olympian proportions. The gods must be in hysterics.
Perhaps the President should go first.
There is a wide generational divide in partisanship according to pew research. Millennials favor the democratic party by a 27 point margin, while the silent generation(in their 80s and 90s) lean towards the GOP by an 8 point margin. Boomers and gen x are split(50-50 almost). If trump and the gop are imposing abstinence it should not be a surprise. The millenial gap could widen further
1
There’s a word for people who use the rhythm method of birth control. They are called parents. This is because sperm can survive in the female reproductive system for an average of 5 to 7 days. This means some die after a couple of days but other sperm can live as long as 10 or 12 days. So there is really no safe time to have unprotected sex. It is also worth noting that the average ejaculation is 300 to 500,000,000 sperm. That’s a lot of sperm lying around in a reproductive system and moving like crazy ever upward. It is clear that rates of teenage pregnancy have fallen in the last decade and it’s because of decent sex education, often provided by Planned Parenthood through school systems. And of course there’s the old joke: Of all the sexual aberrations, abstinence is the least practiced.
And yes, It would be nice if parents were the ones to inform their children about sex. But my experience as a speaker for Planned Parenthood in high schools indicates that they can’t or won’t.
2
Getting lectured by randy people who can't keep their hands off of others. Yeah, that's gonna work.
1
unfortunately it's the willful ignorance of the American people that is symbolized in many Trump policies. You wouldn't need to look deeply to see the hypocrisy and counterproductive aspect of many current policies... But Americans don't seem to like to look into issues, and they do like to point their fingers at others. And that is how we end up with an unethical hypocrite like Trump making policy decisions for the country.
If the giant space fairy really wants people to wait before having sex, why does he give them puberty with all its physical characteristics that attract the opposite sex along with the ability and desire to procreate? Nothing about the cult of Christianity makes rational sense along with its absurd Big Book of Superstition and Mythology. People are free to believe any idiocy they want (First Amendment). Why, oh why do they have to try and force it on the rest of us?
Evangelicals will have to answer for Trump on judgement day.
1
I suspect Melania was probably happy DJT wasn't around after the baby was born.
The abstinence only preference policy of Trump's administration is an absurd idiocy and is designed to appeal to his white reborn Evangelical Christian base. They want to impose their unscientific
ideological beliefs on all Americans and they disdain science and pragmatism as liberal bias. It is unreal that
a licentious New Yorker like Trump would favor this policy
and it only supports how craven,irresponsible and poor a leader he is that he would promote this agenda.
1
The funny side of the this stupidity : this program of Trump administration is sharia's compatible, marvelous.
When you give power to believers, you can be sure that they will do everything that the can to made sexuality more difficult. Sexuality has to be a joy, a delight, and the public institutions have to teach to the teens how practice a safe and fulfilling sexuality.
1
Think your vote doesn't count? This is what results when half the population sits out an election, for whatever unfortunate rationalization they think takes precedence. A fringe movement, made up of cheats, liars, ideological imbeciles, cowards, hypocrites, and delusional ignoramuses gains control and wreaks havoc that will take decades to clean up, if it's even possible. The next time you think your temper tantrum trumps your responsibility to take part in election process, switch on your brain, and actually think.
2
The evangelicals are behind this push for abstinence, while simultaneously (and hypocritically) ignoring (forgiving) Cohen paying off for Trump's 'sins of the flesh'!
1
What a joke. Here you have a president who prides himself and grabbing women's anatomy, making relentlessly sexist remarks, has had numerous extra-marital affairs, is now publicly embroiled with payment to a 'Pornographic actress' -- and yet he continues to hold sway over Christian Evangelicals who preach abstinence?... Give me a break.
1
Practice what you preach. So true in the present! Abstinence for the 99% and the 1% preach.
Trump, proudly having out of wedlock unprotected sex with multiple partners some of whom he barely knew, an out of wedlock birth for sure and who knows if there were other pregnancies. A dedicated attorney to clean up after him. A sad excuse for a husband and a father. And the Evangelicals still make excuses for him while criticizing Gays in long term relationships. Makes it hard if not impossible to have a "come to Jesus moment"
The poster child for how well this works is Bristol Palin. During her mother's campaign, they flaunted her unwed, pregnat belly like a badge of honor because she didn't have an abortion. She wasn't criticized for her unwedded sex but paraded proudly in public. Funny how morals are cast aside when it's a Republican who performs what are touted as immoral acts. Just as they honor Trump the philanderer.
Melinda Gates says that when she speaks to women around the world they are all asking for reliable birth control so they can limit the number of children to the ones they can afford to support. Reliable birth control has raised the status of women by allowing them to control the size of their families and give them a better life. Yet there are still many Republican men who seem to forget all the times they had pre-marital sex and were using condoms. Their real purpose is to keep women where they "belong", barefoot and pregnant.
2
Say it isn't so. I feel like I'm living through the 1980s all over again, with Nancy Reagan's 'just say no' to drugs, sex and whatever else makes life fun and enjoyable.
1
I would never understand the drastic choice of sex abstinence over an educated choice. Sexual desire is a natural impulse and it's part of our biology. The problem arises when people cannot make a distinction between raping a woman or enjoying a consensual intercourse. Our society, in some way, is repressing the joy of sex and at same time encouraging bigotry, hypocrisy and misinformation.
Trump, his administration and his party are mostly men and women in their 60s and 70s when there is no sex drive left(not without viagra). Abstinence is not a choice for them. So they are imposing abstinence.
Like other aspects of Trump's Administration, it's back to the 50's!
SAD
I understand the NYT's need based on their subscription base for another article that blames Trump for our ills, but I think this one is a poor choice.
The US fertility rate has dropped to the lowest number reported since fertility records started being kept more than a century ago. The teen birth rate has declined more or less continuously over the past 25 years.
Please start doing some reporting on the unsustainable population growth across our world. That is the big driver of climate change, famine, war and economic migrants.
1
How is a curriculum of "Just Say No," supposed to have any credibility when the person occupying the Office of The President is an amoral hedonist who not only can't say no, but harasses and abuses people to get what he wants.
Tweens and teenagers are young, but they are not naive, and they are very adept at sniffing out hypocrisy at its most blatant.
The Conservative agenda yet again assumes that "others" including their own children are incapable of independent thought and cannot make decisions in their best interests if they are provided information in a factual and unbiased manner. Haven't they learned from their own sex scandals, among the most Holier-Than-Thou politicians and Evangelical Pastors that prohibition and repression are the quickest routes to corruption and outsized obsession in the taboo?
1
As I read about this I heard a voice trying to tell me "No one --even adults and even inside marriage-- is permitted to enjoy sex." An echo of old Catholic doctrine? Or a reflection of Donald Trump's idea that only he gets to enjoy? Anyone have a clue?
1
The idea that abstinence until marriage is the only moral choice seems to be entirely a religious opinion, and so has no business being imposed on people who don't subscribe to it, or being taught in public schools, which are agencies of the state. There are good reasons why the First Amendment -- the very first part of the first Amendment -- prohibits an establishment of religion. The fact that abstinence-only "education," or rather preaching, is foolish and counterproductive is obviously reason enough to eschew it, but that is secondary to the constitutional prohibition.
1
"A clear and present danger" is the only acceptable reaction.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that most men are not very aware or interested in the profound difference that contraception and abortion availability have on the lives of women. The ability to control her own fertility is central to a woman's ability to guide her own life trajectory. What's thunderously astonishing, however, is how many women seem to be oblivious or callous to the issue as well. Availability of these services is not only just and essential for women, it is essential for the good of our society.
Contrast these cohorts of women:
1.) Educated and financially secure women who manage to acquire the contraception and abortion services they need, regardless of impediments. These are the wives, daughters and girlfriends of our hypocritical legislators, of course.
2.) Uneducated, poor, and very young women who are UNABLE to acquire reproductive services, who then have babies they know they are unprepared to adequately raise, but do the best they can. Their life trajectory is now set for them.
3.) Saddest of all, we have girls and women whose lives are disorganized, brutal, riddled with drugs, domestic abuse, and poverty, who have absolutely no business having babies, but who have babies anyway. Their kids are the ones who come to school without lunch money or a coat, who still can't read in 3rd grade, and get to know the juvenile authorities early on. Very expensive kids for all of us.
This reality exists whether we turn away from it or not.
7
This is another of those issues that really calls into question the character of the American people. By promoting abstinence at the expense of birth control/family planning we actually increase pregnancies and births, and we try to push these policies on an already overpopulated world. Its shameful and mean-spirited.
And when this failed abstinence policy is pushed by a man like Donald Trump, it shows even more the unethical and hypocritical nature of it...- Which reflects back on the nature of Americans.
3
Ineffective and spread misinformation? That sums up this administration and its policies perfectly.
2
There's something fundamentally wrong with the Bible's founding myth.
Being a Christian means building your entire life on the notion that we inherit a punishment for something not we but our forefathers did, and that condemns us to be ashamed of our own naked body.
That shame constantly teaches us to turn away from rather than learn how to accept, love and explore our own bodies.
And without accepting, loving and exploring ourselves, two decades of science in the meanwhile have shown, you cannot possibly install an effective way of dealing with negative and potentially harmful (for yourself and/or others) emotions. So you tend to act upon them, rather than embracing them with compassion, in yourself and others, which is now proven to be THE most efficient way to learn how to treat others and yourself with respect.
As a consequence, instead of teaching our kids how to lovingly and respectfully explore their own minds and bodies, alone and together with people they intimately love, we teach them to fear their own minds and bodies ... all while adding the false notion that sex is our "animal" part, NOT the divine part, and paradoxically, that being true to yourself - especially as a man - means to have sex WITHOUT any love (forcing women, or paying for it).
So once married, these men go to prostitues, rape their co-workers, and even refuse to have a working dinner with a female colleague without having their wife around to tame their "real and sinful nature"...
How sad.
1
Can just one day go by, please, without hearing of yet another of Trump's ideas for making America great again?
Some on this comment board have said that we are sexual beings but humans should be able to control their impulses. We are not like animals such as dogs who cannot and are "in heat" much of the time. We should be held to a higher standard than animals. Please excuse my being so frank in my description but it is the truth.
We must take responsibility for our actions which liberals do not care to do. They want to say it is a young person's right to be sexually active anytime and whenever they wish. They will pay the price which may result in unintended consequences such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. All the sex education and contraception permitted will not change the fact that accidents will happen. They are still children and are not mature enough to handle these negative results. Their lives will be changed forever and not for the better.
What the Republicans are trying to accomplish under this current administration makes sense. Let's at least give it a chance.
Except that all studies show that you're wrong, and merely advancing decisions that increase abortions in this country.
Why are you refusing to take responsibility for this kind of decisions?
1
Oh, brother. What a crock! Liberals are not pushing kids to have sex as a right. Its going to happen. Some will abstain and some will not. So, They should have information...they should have the truth. Oh, gee...forgot this admin doesnt know what that is.
2
I'm not sold that the push for abstinence is all that bad. It's an idea that would teach teenagers to reign in their appetite --to not be a slave to immediate pleasure, but to take a longer more strategic view to life and relationships. For where has the current impulsive if-it-feels-good-do-it-now mindset gotten us? It's like we're a nation of Chris Farelys. One out of three adults in the US is obese, illicit drug ODs are at or near record highs, and I won't even mention record STD rates. Do you think people got this way via self-denial and moderation?
The Church Lady would agree with me, but that shouldn't be cause for automatic rejection. I don't care if it makes Trump look like a hypocrite. The concern should be for the greater good.
1
So ... teenagers should be taught to cultivate their appetite for learning math and science and exercise and spirituality, but NOT their appetite for learning how to love themselves and other people, and as a consequence how to explore their bodies and sexuality ... ?
Somehow, cultivating your appetite for learning to know yourself and your body, in your imagination, cannot be but becoming a "slave to immediate pleasure" ... ?
It's precisely this kind of imagination that throws our kids into relationships/marriages where they don't have the skills at all to lead a happy, respectful, loving life, let alone make their partners and children truly happy.
Do you know that in other cultures, a woman's vagina is called a "yoni", the most divine part of her entire body, and THE gateway to the highest form of spirituality?
There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, and it's certainly not girl's bodies or sexuality, but the way we've come to think about them in the first place...
1
It's hard to overlook the irony of Trump pushing abstinence.
5
According to the CDC, the USA has had a recent decline in teen pregnancy from ages 15-24. WHY? Studies which are stated on the CDC indicate that the increased use of contraception is a major factor. How do teens learn about contraception? From programs that teach it to them. NOT ABSTINENCE ONLY programs. BTW, these programs also teach about STD prevention, including HIV.
Note: I never used the words " diversity," "fetus," "transgender," "vulnerable," "entitlement," "science-based" and "evidence-based in my comment.
https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/pubs/journals/AJPH-2...
https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm
The more you dislike abortions, the more vigorous you should be about promoting the use of long-acting reversible contraception. Nothing else - especially abstinence programs - comes close.
4
"There is no good evidence that abstinence-only education prevents or delays young people from having sex, leads them to have fewer sexual partners or reduces rates of teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections."
I feel this is an understatement. Unwanted pregnancies flourish where abstinence-only sex ed is taught, primarily in the so-called Bible Belt. It's not just a lack of evidence of their efficacy. There's a preponderance of evidence that non-abstinence-only education is superior to abstinence-only for reducing unwanted pregnancies.
But in light of this, pro-lifers still insist on abstinence-only sex ed. This is telling. It is telling that their agenda has less to do with the life of the unborn baby, and more to do with the arbitrary morality of their doctrinaire religion and infantile theory of supernaturalism.
Because pro-lifers reject educational methods that demonstrably reduce unwanted pregnancies and, in turn, reduce the number of abortions, I can not and will not take them seriously.
3
DARE programs did not work for drugs, SAY No to Drugs did not work, Just Say NO does not work to stop rape...why do they think abstinence works. There was even a time teen agers signed chastity vows to remain virgins until marriage & that didn’t work 100%. Proper education on all aspects of sex is important.
I was abstinent until I married at 29. The reason was not moral; I was simply aware that I was unable financially and emotionally to raise a child. Birth control notwithstanding, fear of suddenly being thrust into fatherhood overwhelmed my need for sex. This was purely selfish. I was not concerned about the potential child's welfare, nor that of the potential mother, nor the lives that would be affected. It was not a choice buoyed by love, but by fear. That was not a healthy motive, but in this less-than-perfect world, protecting oneself, partner and families for the wrong reason is the lesser evil. And to never have to face the horrendous decision re abortion was an enormous bonus.
But there was another reason for my aberrant behavior. I had been taught that sex was a powerful bonding experience and had a deep desire to bond with a life partner uniquely. Of course, I could not know whether this was true or not, but I took the gamble that it was true. Most would consider that choice unhealthy and ridiculous. And most would say it's just not possible to abstain, which is true, if the social context considers guard rails as quaint. But, no, it's not impossible.
The current movement by women shows that many males believe sex-on-demand is an entitlement. That is obviously grotesque. What we are entitled to is high voltage sex in a loving, committed relationship, not because some moralist made a rule, but because it is actually the best.
24
Good for you. However, I do not see that your own point of view qualifies you to make this decision for other people or to decide because you were willing to wait that other people should. I wonder if it ever occurred to you that you also got lucky? After 41 years of marriage to the same man, it certainly occurs to me that I might be. I agree with you, and while I don't think your attitude is quaint, I do find it a bit smug and self-congratulatory. I've known a lot of good Baptists, too, who figured out that there's a lot more to sex than intercourse and managed to be virgins who, like Bill Clinton, had a way of defining sex that did not include all the intimacy that included everything but penetration. Be smug, but know that this is not the choice most people make and to think they will is unrealistic and especially galling coming from someone like Trump.
12
I also was abstentions through four years of courting. It lead to 29 years of intermittent marital sex, two children and the realization that as an old person I am nearly a virgin. Live your lives being caring to each other and respecful to yourself.
3
You're on the money- that's why there was that absurd article about redistributing sex to incels. Sex is no longer the act that most closely binds you to another or a means of procreating. It is a right, a means to self gratification, and almost compulsory. I have in mind the scenes in Brave New World where all citizens have intercourse freely to stabilize the society, that is where we are headed. The dissonance between the left's shaming abstinence as a viable decision and outrage at western rape culture is not reconciable in my eyes.
1
We are sexual beings. The vision of, and groundwork for, a healthy, mutually respectful, well-informed and safe sexual life for adults begins in adolescence. Engaging teens with a positive and empowered approach to growing into healthy sexual partners not only has been shown to reduce teen pregnancy and associated economic challenges but also sets us up for more loving, enduring and sustainable adult relationships. Enough with this administration’s fear-based attempts to deny and disempower.
20
Enough..?? It would seem they have not yet had enough.
1
I used to work near Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn. My work shift was over about 3:30 P.M. I would wait for a bus near Downstate Hospital. On many an afternoon, I would observe young women being discharged from the hospital. They would have newborn babies with them. Many of these young women appeared to be about 16 years old. No one would be at the hospital to pick them up. They would get on the bus. This would happen quite regularly. Going back to abstinence teaching in public schools will only perpetuate this phenomenon.
23
"Abstinence" as a health policy has been the Republican go to since at least Reagan, and no amount of reality seems to make a difference.
17
How many young women woke up this morning knowing that something was "different"? That their life is about to change in ways they're unprepared for. All because of the sex (religious) police and their own discomfort and fear of human sexuality.
I'm well past the age to be having kids, but if I was, I'd want them to have as many facts as possible about their bodies without fear or guilt.
Knowledge is power.
22
News flash - abstinence as a birth control method doesn't work because the "control" part of the "birth control" doesn't work when up against the combination of young brains and hormones. Taking away both usually reliable birth control methods and access to legal abortion means thousands of desperate women will die from botched abortions. Maybe even your daughter, grand-daughter or wife. Why ever would you do this when you know what will be the result? It is utterly irresponsible.
22
Paradoxically, such initiatives have the opposite effect than intended. By portraying sexuality as something dangerous and shameful, conservatives take it out of the realm of normal human activity and actually lend it an air of secrecy that encourages teenage rebellion. The reason that sexuality gets so out of hand is precisely because it is demonized--adolescents are inevitably drawn towards the forbidden fruit, and end up adopting unhealthy behaviors and attitudes towards sex. Conservatives, stop wielding your high-handed, hypocritical "Christian" morality--sex is a normal, healthy aspect of being human, and should not be used as a shame tactic in this day and age of science and reason. Guilt and suppression only lead to excess and risky behavior, and these attitudes deprive people, particularly women, of autonomy over their own bodies. The Trump administration seems determined to take us back to the Stone Age, and yet we have the audacity to superciliously mock the Middle East for remaining entrenched in the eighth century.
21
Reinforcing my suspicion that there's truly nothing on earth that Obama can't be blamed for, Valerie Huber says that Obama was responsible for "normalizing" teen sex. Now it falls on HHS to normalize the delay of teen sex. But sex is in fact a normal part of human development, as is learning to regulate it. The programs HHS is busily defunding teach such regulation. They want what everyone presumably wants: healthy teenagers who don't have babies until they're stable, financially responsible adults. These programs are the good guys, not the bad guys. Making them (not to mention Obama) the enemy is counterproductive and dishonest.
16
This is all Pence; Trump letting Pence having his way choosing agency heads that have control over abortion and contraception issues. This is because Trump is not really interested in this subject, and Pence is fanatically interested.
21
Totally agree
1
I understand the new logo for Health & Human Services will be crossed knitting needles on a field of crosses.
14
I'm thinking of joining Ronald Reagan Jr.'s "Freedom From Religion" even though I'm not an atheist. Enough is enough of American Christianity - for the love of Jesus, for Pete's sake!
17
Abstinence is not a subject that the president has much experience with.
22
Abstinence-only sex education is the friend of abortion. This type of sex education has NEVER worked, and it never will work. The Pollyanna world that some people live in is sad. Kids have sex, they have it everyday, and they do it recklessly. Just like they drink RedBull like it is going out of style and text and drive.
Teach these kids about safe sex and they will have it. There is no evidence that preaching abstinence will keep kids from having sex, but teaching them about contraception will increase safe sex and decrease need for abortions. Isn't that what these people want, fewer abortions?
This is the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It is also the definition of abstinence-only sex education.
14
For tens of thousands of years, the human population remained under 1 billion. Over the last 200 years, because of malaria drugs and sanitation, human population has swelled to 7.5 billion. We've done a good job of saving human lives, but the seas will be barren in 30 years, and animals are disappearing---rhinos, elephants, jaguars, blue whales---95% of the wildlife in India is gone. Man is an apex predator. Overpopulation leads to climate change, war (as populations flee rising seas and drought), to poverty and starvation.
Now isn't the time to teach that sex is evil and ban birth control.
16
Just when I thought this administration couldn’t do another blunder to set the world back 50 years, they did. Does DT really think he’s living in the 1950’s still?
7
This is just more evidence of religion’s failure and people’s debilitating fear of modernization. I married at 18 due to the brainwashing of preachers who warned me to “save” myself for my husband. I was even counseled never to deny my husband sex when he wanted it, regardless of what I wanted. The marriage was a disaster and I left it with a 9-month-old and a restraining order.
Besides my son, the most positive outcome of that whole experience is that I was able to escape that teensy-tribe-huge-bigot thinking once and for all. What I have embraced is the philosophy of Tao and the idea that we are inseparable with each other and our environment; that life is composed of compatible opposites, i.e. Masculine Yang and Feminine Yin. Those opposites can be within or outside of us and if they are balanced joy and harmony ensue. If the Yin and Yang become too out of balance, we have chaos. That chaos can take many forms: a diseased body, a miserable mind, or a soulless spirit. Or, it can come in the form of wars, climate change or polluted oceans. After adopting the philosophy of Tao combined with the teachings of Joseph Campbell, I find my self healthier, happier and more sexually satisfied than I have ever been; I’m 58 years old.
Imagine our world if each of us, including our spiritual, educational and political leaders, believed in the universal principle of Tao. Please, let’s work together to make that so.
11
Boys grow up talking about and involved actively in masturbation, mostly without social stigma.
If we as a society would embrace the same for girls, we might see some major changes in our culture.
6
It's very simple: Laws that increasingly limit abortions require that we simultaneously increase education and availability of birth control. This having one's cake and trying to eat it harms most particularly the young people of our nation, but it also harms all of us, especially at a time when tax and budget policy and the desire to curtail our social safety net diminish even more our ability to assist families.
7
Let’s be real. Funding for comprehensive sex Ed is 100% local. Poor school districts offer no quality sex ed. And nationwide, most states have substandard programs. Comprehensive sex ed benefits the wealthy. Most kids get sketchy information that is of little or no use. Abstinence education is ill advised. But it too is poorly funded. Studies tout the effectiveness of high quality high expense programs which begin with kindergarteners and go from there. Not many schools can afford these programs. When you take into account what most schools can pay for, the bottom line is that most sex ed is useless unless you live in a wealthy district.
Hmm, so married people don't have sex and don't need contraception. After having their 2 kids and maybe having a rocky financial situation, a couple is supposed to "abstain" until man gets his job back (talk about men feeling helpless if they can't find meaningful employment).
It is unbelievable that in an overcrowded world with a C02 problem, we want people to keep trying not to have children without giving them any effective tools. The Catholic church and the Evangelicals have a lot to answer for ...
22
Trump's policies are not driven by a rational 'let's look at the longterm benifit to the country and the world, ' with the expected political back and forth compromises, but strictly by a 'what's in this for me , my campaign donors, and my political base which keeps me in power, the hell with everyone else.' Rising healthcare costs, the opioid crisis, pollution, crumbling infastructure, gun violence -- the federal government doesn't seem concerned. We're turning into a Banana Republic without the bananas.
8
The Trump administration has become the champion of the Christian right's retrograde notions of reproduction. If they could pass a law to repeal human nature they probably would. It's the 21st century, yet Trump Inc has no problem going back a century or two.
5
It is worth remembering that effective birth control is the surest way to prevent abortions. The Trump administration seems to be opposed to both. Perhaps it is time for them to choose the lesser of the two evils and push to make birth control universally available, both here and around the world.
11
The new era of abstinence applies to liberal women as well. In the past ten years, dress codes for women have become more conservative than anytime since 1965. An artifact of #metoo is that any trivially sexual representation of any woman is now politically incorrect.
1
No matter what side you are on, Pro-choice or Pro-Life, comprehensive sex education, not just abstinence, should be addressed. Abstinence is against biological urges, and those urges are strong, so protective sex also needs to be funded.
These people who are against what is certainly common sense education are keeping their heads in the sand, if they believe abstinence is going happen just because they want it too.
Too many young people have ended up pregnant because they did not have access to birth control. This has resulted in unwanted children, who are neglected and/or abused and still condemnation by those who are Pro-Life, as their religious beliefs have taught them to judge unwed mothers, never the unwed fathers, as being morally corrupt.
We are kidding our selves if we think preaching abstinence will result in fewer pregnancies.Those in Congress, the Department of Heath and Human services, and Trump himself are all hypocrites of the highest order.
12
Who could have imagined that an administration captained by the conspicuously randy Donald Trump would encourage sexual abstinence with a straight face?
Weren't such adventures what Donald called his Vietnam?
In any event, the absurdity of this initiative will be eclipsed by weekend tweets and evening scoops, and in the end, we'll have to spend a lot of time and money putting America back together again.
13
Certainly abstinence works in preventing pregnancy. And, just as certainly, when cultures and religions teach males to seek happiness and success based on accomplishments while teaching women to gauge happiness and success by their relationships, dating and mating will involve young males seeking to accomplish something with young females seeking to establish relationships. Biology based reproductive education that includes information about how the brain, neurotransmitters and hormones function during adolescence might lead to young people avoiding fraught situations which could alter their lives dramatically. The reality of how the brain, neurotransmitters and hormones function should tell everyone that nature will fight nurture at least during the teens and twenties. Self-protection including contraception should be taught in schools. And people should be relieved of the fantasy that abortions were not attempted or did not take place prior to Roe v. Wade. On many levels, so-called "family values" reflect gender biased, shame based sexual and reproductive practices which ensure sex and pregnancy related abuse of girls and women.
5
The Crisis Pregnancy Center - abstinence only - cultists, like the Trump cultists, are deeply in denial. They willfully refuse to acknowledge the realities of their own sexual behaviors, their leader's sexual behaviors, their priests sexual behaviors, or the sexual behaviors of normal humans. Then, empowered by this defiant Faith, they are able to justify denying the sexual health care and reproductive health educational needs of everyone, including themselves. The reproductive health programs that were hard-won over two generations that these zealots are dismantling will not simply be refunded and restored. the damage to women's lives and to their families will be persistent and long-lasting. It will take another generation to rebuild them, if not more, primarily because they will have created a new generation as ignorant about sexual health as they are.
7
The problem in GOP land with educating women about their reproductive health is that it gives them power, and that means that they will not only make demands on society and men, but they will also want to run the show as well. It will not be good enough for women to be policemen and congressman, just wait, soon they'll want to be police chief and President. Oh, the horror.
This is nothing more limiting to a girl or woman than not giving her full and unfettered control of her sexual health and sexuality. And, all of this begins with the broadest possible education of girls, and boys.
5
Well, if you don't like "aberrant and shameful" try dangerous and damaging. What parent doesn't want their teenager to abstain from sexual intercourse outside of marriage? I suppose there are some. I've heard of some foolish parents who push their children into such behavior. But it is, nonetheless, dangerous and damaging.
Abstinence is not a viable curriculum for health education and Abstinence Only curricula leave young people with too few tools to protect themselves. But abstinence is the only way to avoid the many sexual-induced pitfalls that lie in the path to successful adult lives. In fighting the uninformed proponents of an ill-conceived strategy let us not throw out the only surefire method of birth control and protection against the spread of STDs.
16
What makes you believe that most parents would want their kids to "abstain from sexual intercourse outside of marriage" ... ?
If you call sexual intercourse outside of marriage "dangerous and damaging", could you please explain why?
In the meanwhile, here's some info about my own case.
As a teenager, my parents never adhered to the "abstinence outside of marriage" idea. Instead, they told me about how absolutely wonderful having sex with someone you deeply love is, and how sad it is to have sex without such a deeply loving relationship.
Very soon though, I found out that their own sexual relationship wasn't satisfying at all. My mother had been raised by "abstinence only" parents and was so afraid of sex that even AFTER the day of her marriage a priest had to explain to her that it's actually a beautiful deed of love/charity for her husband so that she should allow him to do what he wants and "let go". Which is what she then did.
He had received the same kind of education, but had been abused by his local priest as a child, so he had lost all faith in this kind of "ethics" (and, to be frank, in himself, which is why he never tried to have sex with another woman before marriage either).
Once married, he wanted to experiment, but had to live with a sexually ignorant woman. After 15 years of marriage, they didn't make love to each other anymore.
I, however, eagerly looked for a man I'd deeply love. I met him when I was 24, we had years of wonderful sex, and never married.
16
Anyone who is too young for sex outside of marriage is certainly too young for sex within marriage!
4
I'll add my hand to the crowd of people who DO want their kids to have sex before marriage. Absolutely!
Sex was one of the most sublime pleasures of my adolescence. Why would I wish to deprive my kids of the same experiences?
As a sexually active teen and young adult, I learned the very important difference between lust and love.
Most of my premarital sex was quite enjoyable, as were the partners with whom I slept. And the few not-so-great relationships were ultimately good learning experiences: I learned what I need in a romantic relationship, and learned how to be fulfilling partner to someone else.
When it came time to settle down and commit, at age thirty-three, I was ready. Twenty-eight monogamous years and two kids later, I'm still in love.
Oh, and our kids? Twenty-one and twenty-three, sexually active since their latter teens, and doing very well in life.
16
"The administration’s approach defies all common sense. There is no good evidence that abstinence-only education prevents or delays young people from having sex, leads them to have fewer sexual partners or reduces rates of teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections"
Just ask Bristol Palin.
3
Sadly this will increase the number of abortions women seek, and also with a reduction in health care for women, there will also be more health issues with the pregnant woman and the fetus.
The areas of the country where reduced access to contraception and reliance on teaching abstinence have higher unwed mothers and lower economic conditions.
3
Finally managed to slip through the looking glass to 1818. Now that progress you can believe in.
3
Who knew Lewis Carroll wrote science fiction?
Wonderland is the new America.
"It makes it difficult for women to acquire the knowledge they need to control if and when they become pregnant". That right. It's all about controlling women.
7
Many Americans are unaware of the current high maternal mortality rate in the US, particularly in rural areas (maternal mortality refers to deaths during pregnancy, labor and delivery, as well as post-partum).
It is now safer to be pregnant and give birth in Slovenia or Malta than the US, which sits at the bottom of first-world tables.
Thus, American girls and women pregnant in 2018 face health risks their mothers never approached.
Birth control reduces those risks. Abortion reduces those risks.
If ineffective government-ordered programs continue, they will be responsible for a host of deaths in the US and globally, and, once antibiotic-resistant organisms become common, America will face maternal mortality rates comparable to the pre-antibiotic era, when every extended family lost mothers, sisters, daughters to unstoppable fevers and septicemia.
2
In talking about the "abstinence only" slogan The Times says "The administration’s approach defies all common sense." Haven't we already learned that President Trump's approach to any problem defies all common sense ? By aligning himself with the redemption crowd, does he sees an avenue to his eternal salvation ?
3
All this "state's rights" rhetoric coming from Republicans just reinforces the impression that Trump's mob is in cahoots with Putin to break up the US.
1
For a man who's middle names might as well be Infidelity and Adultery, this is hypocritical to the point of being hilarious. It being quite funny if the consequences were not so tragic, ruining so many young lives!
2
The amusing thing in this discussion is very simple and obvious. The biological purpose of sex is procreation. Progressivism has omitted that reality from any discussion. So the narcissism of "my body" and "my pleasure" is really its mantra.
1
Not so long ago when people died young and every birth was needed to insure an adequate population to provide the basic necessities, yes sex was for procreation. The world has changed dramatically in a short period of time. The world is overpopulated. Most people can't provide for more than 1 or 2 children. We don't die young. Yet the sex drive remains as if we were still living in a bygone era. Progressives accept simple reality. People have always had sex and always will. Sex education and widely accessible birth control are vital to living sustainably on our planet in the 21st century. Somehow the humor in all that simple reality is not obvious.
The biology does not change despite your perspective.
Many teenage girls live in homes where they are preyed upon by: step-fathers, "family friends", or just family. They are not safe or protected. They have no place to go. It is a matter of survival.
They need to be protected from pregnancy. Household rape is an universal problem. The GOP has a slush fund for sexual harassment allegations, Trump has decades worth of illicit behavior, our justice system lets rape kits collect dust for years...and my tax dollars are paying for disinformation.
3
Because of these people's attitudes “sexual risk avoidance” and “healthy relationships” are most likely being used in a way to limit knowledge - which is a shame, because these are darn good reasons for teenagers not to have sex, and should be a part of any program with info of if you are going to have sex...
1
The average age for an adult to come to financial maturity is currently about 26. Even getting married before 26 is something of an anomaly. You see it occasionally but anyone born in the past few decades will definitely raise an eyebrow. Hormones on the other hand kick-in about 12 years earlier if not sooner. Do you really expect young adults to go a decade or more without any sex at all? I don't care what your religion says. The expectation is completely absurd. You need the lower the age of adulthood in order for abstinence to have any grounding in reality. Until then, birth control for girls and condoms for boys. Treat your partners nicely and go figure out your life. We can talk about marriage later.
1
One of the things most voters don't realize is that when you elect a President of a given political party, you are opening the door to a raft of agenda items that get no attention during the campaign an that can be implemented with no Congressional oversight. Every time a Republican is elected President, members of the sex-hating, science-hating 1950s era prude patrol are empowered to shove their Mayberry agenda on everyone. (Dems have their own versions of this too, with nonsense like forcing universities to undermine due process in certain disciplinary settings.) So, it was entirely predictable that a trump administration would include an assault on sex and efforts to force conservative Christianity on everyone. In the case of trump, the funny/strange part is that the fuddy-duddies pushing this "Back to Past" agenda have aligned themselves with an avatar of social amorality.
2
Education for young people regarding abstinence should increase. Sins of the flesh are the downfall of mankind. Discipline and abstinence are the path to success in this life and beyond. Sex is highly overrated and leads to poor choices when indulged out of wedlock. We are paying for the sexual revolution in more ways the one now. Shameful.
In the end these are policies of Trump’s craven political approach to all decisions.
He must keep his white evangelical base happy. Regardless of any other consequences.
And so far it works as he has very high approval of these white men and women.
Between his statements in support of the NRA he made yesterday and these comments Trump is trying to overwhelm the news of the swampy stuff coming out about Cohen and the mess Giuliani is making.
And it will probably work with his base. If only everyone else went to the polls as reliably.
1
Disinformation is at the heart of this entire administration. The evangelicals who back the president and abstinence have a higher divorce rate and higher rates of teenage pregnancy. Oddly, the hollowing out of middle and working class families that’s been documented in so many recent publications (JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is one) will only be advanced by these delusional efforts. Teen pregnancy, early marriage, divorce, single motherhood is not a promising plan for life.
2
New York State has a population of 20 million, larger than Holland and nearly the size of all of Scandinavia. Why do New Yorkers need the Great Father in Washington to tell them how to have sex? To which part of the Constitution does this relate? Babies are not, one hopes, sold in Interstate Commerce.
Why isn't this an illustration of how when a country hits 327 million people not everything should be centralized? Why should someone in Hawaii have to travel 12 hours to Washington, D.C. to get his or her local sex ed curriculum adjusted?
Why aren't states and cities big enough to decide how to handle the challenges described in this article?
2
Preventing pregnancy and preventing STDs, while overlapping, are two different things.
Preventing unwanted sex relies primarily on not getting drunk nor consuming other intoxicants or hypnotics.
Abstention helps protect romantic youngsters from becoming infatuated. Psychological welfare can be harder to regain than aborting chemically an unwanted embryo or foetus, neither of which is yet a human being.
US employers and generous GOP contributors want as many young, poor, uneducated women as possible to give birth and bring up equally poor and uneducated children so that US employers can minimise their labour costs, and recruit low-cost unskilled workers into their fast food outlets and all the rest.
3
"The administration's approach defies all common sense."
No, it doesn't, as long as you consider that Trump is playing to his base, which is made up of a particular kind of person who believes in particular things.
I imagine Trump's "abstinence-only" approach plays pretty well with middle-aged to old, white, evangelical Christians.
If Trump's parents had only practiced what Trump is preaching!
3
This behavior fits completely within the pattern of the current administration. They don't believe in science (or won't admit to it, or only want the science they want), in existing and carefully constructed data, or serious expertise.
Look at Scott Pruitt at the EPA, who wants to roll back environmental standards. Look at the recent appointment of Dr. Oz to a health panel related to sport, nutrition and fitness. Look at Ben Carson at HUD, Betsy DeVos at education--not to mention the recent attempt to appoint his personal White House physician to run the VA.
His defense selections had been better, in terms of expertise--even though several have left or are teetering--but these did not run afoul of his focused distaste for science. Those that lost their job just ran afoul of something else, to include their own expertise.
This isn't to say that expertise is enough, but it is a necessary base standard. This administration skips the component for many positions. As for the man in the White House himself, just look at his ongoing oratory on hairspray: https://www.factcheck.org/2016/05/trump-on-hairspray-and-ozone/ . What an intellect. But he will usually select people who he believes look good on camera. There's at least one base standard.
2
A few weeks ago a judge found that the Trump administration had improperly terminated federal grants to organizations working to prevent teen pregnancy prevention prevention programs. In other words, HHS had done an end-run around Congress, thwarting its obvious intention to fund comprehensive sex ed programs. The grantees that sued will get to keep their grants ... for a short while.
5
I wish every single Trump abstained.
6
In Ireland, women are fighting for the right to have an abortion and in this strange, bizarre trumpian reality, we here must fight to keep that right we earned so many years ago. Men like Pence have kept our fight going over the years but never before has our right to control our bodies been so tenuous. The Handmaidens Tale May not be fiction,after all.
2
The irony of trump supporting abstinence only is mind boggling.
2
How to make an abstinence program effective? The 80% impact for the 20% effort is aim it at men and then put teeth into it. The term "rape", generally with a woman as the victim, says women want to abstain but men refuse to comply.
Genetic finger printing, rape kit samples and, if a child is born, gene matching provide the evidence of who the man was. The teeth need to be financial reparation for rape, and child support for consensual non-abstinence. We already have child support requirements but minimal enforcement of them. So put the money where the mouth is (for politicians) and where other parts of the anatomy are (for the non-abstinent male).
Whether you like it or not,
Teenagers are sexual beings. It's human biology.
If you deny them sex education, birth control and abortion, you will end up with teenagers having
babies and lots of STDS.
Why is sex such a big deal?
We need to change our attitudes about and accept reality .
2
Possibly Mr.Trump should have practiced, in the past, what he [now] preaches in the present.
2
I am assuming this includes MEN, as well as women!! Right?
3
Hmm, when I first saw the headline I thought it was in reference to ignoring facts, good science or critical thinking. Actual article does support the thought!
This isn't about birth control or sex, it is about control. Like prohibition, it is based in notions of black and white evil versus morality and when looking at the ills of something the religious attitude is 'suppress it' rather than saying "what works to amend misery". Prohibition came about because of the very ill effects of alcohol in society, not just public drunkenness but the economic and social misery is placed on society, and a lot of people in fact realized something needed to be done. With sex, the consequences of sexuality not well thought out or controlled is obvious as well, unwanted pregnancy, STD's, a range of issues.
Yet as with prohibition rather than be pragmatic the religious turned this into a crusade that really was about their attempt to control society and force them to behave as they wanted. With liquor, rather than doing what was (successfully) done after prohibition, regulate it (drinking ages, liquor licenses, regulating alcohol content, laws on serving people, zoning for liquor businesses), it was 'ban the demon rum'. With sex, rather than taking a pragmatic approach, it was the old "sex is for babies, sex is immoral, sex is dirty' so don't do it nonsense, rather than giving people informed decision making.
The best sex ed for kids IMO is abstinence plus, talking about the very real power and dangers of sex while giving the kids real information...but the problem is that gives people choice, something religion doesn't want, they want force.
1
What is happening to our country? America is a "pro-life nation" since when? If this maladministration continues, if policies like this succeed, generations of lives will be ruined. And somehow, it will be blamed on Hillary Clinton and the undereducated (i.e., DeVos, anti-science policies), easily-swayed (i.e., Fox News, unprincipled Independents, overreliance on social media), self-defeating rubes (yes, it’s mainly rural voters) who fell for it in 2016 will fall for it again in 2020, and 2024 and so on... until America is replaced by some kind of authoritarian, theocratic feudalism. The dream will be dead. Think I am being overly dramatic? IT IS HAPPENING RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR FACES! For love of country and all things pure and decent, VOTE THEM OUT!
5
Do these men realize that abstinence means they also won't be having sex? After all, it takes two to tango -- or not.
6
Who could be better than Trump as an advocate for abstinence?
3
Having recently retired after more than 3 decades working in Title X funded family planning and women’s health programs – as a clinician and an educator – it’s hard to contain my frustration and my rage. Study after study after study has shown that access to comprehensive sex education and free/affordable reproductive health care (for women, men and teens) consistently reduces unplanned pregnancy, abortion and STI rates as well maternal and infant mortality. And – not only do these programs save lives, they save huge amounts money by reducing health care, social services, etc. costs down the road.
Title X grant applications are due later this month. Successful, well-established family planning programs will likely see funding cuts (effective Sept. 1) as they now compete with programs which emphasize abstinence only, unreliable methods such as “rhythm”, parental and spousal (really!) involvement in a women’s contraception decisions etc. for limited federal dollars.
I have no doubt that, 10 years from now, we’ll be competing for funding to study why there are more teen pregnancies, abortions, HIV/STDs, infertility, maternal and infant deaths (especially among low income and people of color) . . .
8
This is not just about trying to force people to remain celibate until marriage. It's about trying to force people to refrain from all sex, married or otherwise, unless and until they intend to reproduce. It is, in short, a frontal attack on the entire concept of sex for pleasure. And while it's ironic that this is being pushed forward by an administration headed by an unabashed libertine, it's also a deeply sad and impoverished view of sexuality.
175
I also do not think the Republicans care if people produce children they cannot support, nurture, cloth or educate. Just means more desperate people who will be obliged to work in low paying dead end jobs. Suits them fine.
11
When I taught a sociology survey course at the University of New Mexico, the sex and gender classes were unsurprisingly the best attended. One of the things I did--both to spark critical thinking and show the usefulness of the methodology we'd been studying--was take anonymous in-class surveys to compare their own sexual behavior to peer-reviewed data on their parents' generations. I always included questions on this topic. Upon seeing the results, the 200+ young adults with clouds of hormones hovering over their heads would quickly divide into two groups: those who were genuinely surprised in one way or another by the data derived from their own experiences, and those who refused to believe anything different from what they had been 'taught' by their parents and preachers, notwithstanding the evidence produced literally before their very eyes. My point? By the time a person has reached his or her late teens, it is incredibly difficult to use data--no matter how sound or compelling--to affect their *willingness* to change their minds on the very things that will determine the course of their lives, forever.
7
Who is surprised when the Trump Administration declines to discuss condoms? Really.
POTUS doesn't appear able to arrange a little PDA from FLOTUS. Hats and separate quarters. Watch those hands!
Abstinence for All. So much winning.
11
Trump not only doesn't want to "discuss" condoms..... he also didn't use one when he had his fling with Stormy Daniels.
Seriously? A man in his 70's who was/is ignorant of the problems that can crop up? A married man who is indifferent to passing on disease to his wife?
Ah, Stormy - you should have insisted.
Who knows where Him and His has been?
2
Reality is that when abstinance doesn't work and a pregnancy occurs it's not the male who gets the blame. Or the responsibility. Republicans - Keeping women in their place as secondary citizens forever.
28
Valerie Huber and Trump never let the facts get in the way of their erroneous opinions. Where are all the conservatives complaining about government assistance families having too many children? Don't they realize the Huber Trump approach will lead to more children? Their pretzel logic is breathtaking.
14
It makes sense when you understand social conservatives' real agenda. Their highest priority is not reducing government spending (although they often use that as a kind of cover). Their first -- and highest -- priority is to find ways to punish those (especially women) who do not conform to their version of sexual morality. If a young, unmarried woman gets pregnant, being forced to carry the child to term is, in their warped view of the world, the "wages of sin."
3
In abstinence-land, people who misbehave by having sex too early must bear the consequences, including the stigma, financial burden and derailment of life plans. Conservatism as a philosophy only works if people get what they deserve, and thereby serve as an example to everyone else.
1
"New Era of Abstinence" -- interesting; I hadn't heard that fundamental human nature had been repealed.
20
In 16 or 17 years, when the unwanted children that result from abstinence-only programs reach their teenage years, the crime rate will begin to rise significantly. Historically, it decreased when birth control methods became dependable and abortion was legalized.
29
As long as creation and/or intelligent design is being taught in science classes in the US of A, nothing about the new policy of abstinence only is surprising.
All other advanced countries that teach birth control in biology have a much lower percentage of abortions, a much lower percentage of out-of-wedlock births, and a much lower one of teenage pregnancies to boot.
21
Mankind has chosen a sinful path and is reaping the consequences.
1
In fact, many Western countries don't teach birth control in biology classes at all.
Biology is about science, not about how to live your life, in other words ethics.
Whether you should opt for abstinence, as a teenager, or birth control and how to use birth control is explained and discussed in philosophy and/or religion classes, because THAT is where ethics belong.
Science never tells us what to do, it merely tells us how living organisms function, and that's it.
And of course, as intelligent design isn't a scientific theory at all, outside of the US you don't find it in biology classes either - and most of the times even not in religion classes taught at secondary Christian schools either (because truly religious people don't need fake science to transmit a religious way of life to their children, obviously; they lead through example and by teaching and discussing sacred texts instead).
Politicizing science and religion EVEN inside our classrooms is a uniquely American aberration, in the West.
2
We are only Number 1 in debt and military funding.
Everything else is 18th or even 50th.
Education?
Health care? Children's aid?
Check out our real numbers.
We are no longer anything to write home about.
In fact, we don't even teach penmanship anymore.
..... that's no accident, either.....
5
Rather than “The New Era of Abstinence,” this should have been entitled “Back to the Old Era of Abstinence” when women had no civil rights, no autonomy, and no access to any form of birth control except abstinence. Trump and his band of hypocritical religious zealots are marching our country, and women especially, back to the 19th century. My monthly donations to Planned Parenthood will continue and increase.
36
And I shudder when I see Mike Pence hovering in the background; christian theocracy his aim.
1
The apparent contradiction between the libertine Donald Trump and the Puritanical policies of his administration is not really a contradiction at all.
Donald Trump understands that his political power—his political survival really—rests on the loyalty of his base which to a large extent is made up of conservative Evangelical Christians. In order to keep their loyalty he is willing to give them what they want whether it makes sense or is good for the country or not. In exchange they will make life miserable for any Republican who fails to tow the line.
Trump may have the support of a minority of the country but in the absence of effective opposition from the Democrats whose entire strategy seems to be to wait for Robert Mueller to descend from the clouds with a fistful of indictments, it is more than enough to wreak havoc on the rest of us.
58
Here's what I don't understand.
In a democracy, it's the democratic process that selects the winners of elections.
People have the choice between many different ideas and individuals, and the more you systematically go voting and vote for the politicians that, among those running, come closest to your own ideals, the more you're using your constitutional power as a citizen to take the country as it is today into the direction of those ideals.
The second constitutional power to influence elections, as ordinary citizens, is to make sure that you're well-informed and fact-check the news, especially news you "like" or that seems to be evidently true to you, and then share that information with others who politically disagree with you, in order to have as many real, respectful debates among citizens as possible.
Democrats just had an absolutely wonderful president, both as politician and as a person, and achieved a lot thanks to his negotiating skills.
Under Trump, they've worked very hard to stay united and defend laws that not only the vast majority of Dem voters but even a vast majority of the American people want, effectively blocking the GOP's attempt to destroy the healthcare of 30 million people etc.
And then ... there are STILL people like you, who merely stand at the sidelines and write comments, and imagine that Democrats would be doing nothing and "waiting" ... ? And then even blaming them for it ... ?
We only have the government we deserve ...
24
There really wasn't any candidate for President in 2916 who came anywhere near my ideals. I voted for Hillary anyway, but of course thousands of others couldn't be bothered.
I want to assign blame to entities who produce and distribute false political advertising. That is overwhelmingly destructive to democracy. How can we put an end to that?
1
This has been a battle of progressive thinking against the bible thumpers, and still is. Trump's obsequiousness to the evangelicals is one of the more ironic twists of presidential history. While they clamor for a president to protect their religious freedom, they infringe on rational perspectives about birth control and women's rights. We need freedom from them.
85
Religious freedom does not include dragooning the government into endorsing specious fantasies, or punishing others in the name of a completely imaginary personality.
3
"Mr. Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services is quietly advancing an anti-science, ideological agenda."
Now that the anti-science crowd is controlling all levels of the government, and its propaganda machines spreading fake news day after day, there's only one option left to MAGA.
That option includes ACCEPTING the fact that whether as a government we decide to respect scientific results or not (= to only sign evidence-based policies into law), is a matter of political choice, and as a consequence, a matter of ideology.
Of course, science itself is the very opposite of ideology, but that's no longer the question here. The question is: why would we, as a society, value science, and most of all, how can we, as ordinary citizens and non scientists, "trust" scientists and/or distinguish real science from fake science?
What FN is telling 35% of the country each day again, is that all the science that GOP politicians don't like because their wealthiest donors have short-term interests that need politicians who ignore it, is actually fake science.
So what they're blaming "liberals" of, is to actively distort scientific results in order to push their own anti-science ideology.
We will never be able to fight back as long as we don't manage to address this issue head on. It's not enough to merely call the GOP "anti-science", we have to actively take their "news" into account and show people how to refute it, if not, FN will end up causing irreversible damage.
30
Why is it that so many people who claim to be against abortion don’t seem to get these simple truths: 1) abortion will never be outlawed in this country: 2) people will have sex outside of marriage: 3) teaching people how to not get pregnant will reduce abortions tremendously.
Therefore, let’s make sure contraception is widely available and that kids who are old enough to have sex know how to use it. (And for what it’s worth, I’m one of the 10% who waited: I do believe that sex should be reserved for marriage. But that doesn’t mean I get to tell you what to believe.)
97
Thanks @ERT!
Perfectly and succintly expressed!
1
Abortion is the leading-edge wedge issue to make the US a theocracy.
2
Married women also seek and get abortions.
3
Are you arguing that abstinence is not possible? That is not true. I know it is not true, because I waited until I was married, and I know many other people who did the same. Are you arguing that abstinence does not work? If you are, then you are the one that is denying science. Abstinence is the only 100 percent effective means of preventing pregnancy.
10
No one is saying abstinence doesn’t work. They’re saying abstinence-only PROGRAMS don’t work.
119
No, nobody is arguing things like that.
The bottom line here is:
1. if, as a government, you tell kids that the ideal is abstinence, and you don't add information about birth control and how to prevent becoming pregnant, then all the scientific studies out there show that the number of abortions increase. So IF you want less abortions in this country and IF you want the government to help us attain this goal, it's irrational to focus on abstinence only, you HAVE to actively invest in prevention, contrary to what the GOP does.
2. Abortions happen, whether they are legal or not, and that is because women have always and will always take their own decisions about their body and life, rather than bowing to the force of one or the other government. And that is only normal, as each individual is responsible for the most fundamental choices in his/her own life, in the end. No government bureaucracy will ever be able to make these choices in your place.
What that means is that IF you opt for abstinence, as an individual, then first of all, you have every right to do so. But IF you would also love the idea that the entire country adopts your own individual choices, then the only politically acceptable way to do so is through (1) leading by example, and (2) engaging in real, respectful debates with those who disagree. Those are the only things that may convert other people. Trying to force people to become like you through government meddling won't convert anybody.
60
And suicide in early adulthood is effective in reducing the prevalence of Alzheimers.
2
Of course "abstinence only" and "just say no" are known failures. So doing the same thing over and over expecting the results to be different only proves what?
On the contrary, to the 1% who own your currency, more mouths to feed mean economic growth and further return on their investments. Ask any broker: birth rates are a leading indicator. Higher birth rates also keeps labor cheap, poor and preoccupied. Perfect for maintaining inequality.
59
Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
I want to add a little lightness to the discussion by quoting the essence of a cartoon I recently read. It was published over Easter weekend. Two eggs were sitting at a table having a conversation. One said to the other: “I don’t understand it. One day I am the symbol of new life. The next day I’m a sandwich.” Now, I want to suggest the thought that nature flushes fertilized eggs from the uterus often when the egg fails to attach securely to the membrane of the womb or from a number of other reasons. When it happens the woman may feel extra severe menstrual cramps and never be aware of the reason why. I believe anti-abortionists place too much value on a fertilized egg.
2
Abstinence education - the modern prohibition. And it will no doubt prove equally as "successful", aka counterproductive. We simply never seem to learn much of anything.
49
People having sex on TV & parents having sex on the living room couch while children watch sex on TV does nothing to support abstinence only. Nine year olds are having sex. How do you preach abstinence to kids who see sex every where all the time? Birth control needs to be included in every conversation on sex. Sex is natural & biological & abstinence is a mindful effort on nature.
When these shenanigans are reported on as being efforts of the "Trump administration", they are, in fact, the work of the 'Pence administration'. It's not hard to see the right wing and Pence's fingerprints all over this. Trump could care less about these issues.
137
Trump himself could care less about the birth control issue but he and the Republicans need the far-right ultra conservative anti birth control, pro war, and pro death penalty voters to stay in power.
9
And Pence is 100% the Koch's boy (the New Yorker did a good piece about this a while back). See what they're doing? Most of the policies were seeing actually have Koch fingerprints on them.
3
Mr Trump’s contradictions are well known and White House chaos makes for compelling reading, but real policy and regulatory action is taking place elsewhere. I hope the NYT journalists are encouraged to broaden their scope to include these important setbacks to women’s and minority rights, environmental protections (for us as well as our water and land), and so much more. Stormy and Michael and Rudi are entertaining but we’re in danger of not focusing on some bigger problems.
53
Trump doesn’t show much loyalty to those who support him. But he is giving the evangelicals everything they have ever wanted. This abstinence, anti-birth control policy is just another present to the religious right for ignoring Trump’s personal behavior. I guess the evangelicals must believe that their path to heaven is assured if they can prevent abortion and oppose sexual behavior even if it means supporting a serial liar, adulterer, cheat and traitor.
77
I receive many impressions of life from media and and from my participation in it as an inhabitant of, certainly, a lower middle class area. These impressions have recently caused me uneasy moments when I imagine how dogs are treated, mostly out of sight; not that many, probably most are getting what they need to survive. Some of these dogs have become unwanted, some are wanted to satisfy domination drives.
Contraception helps prevent unwanted people. When it fails, abortion can prevent the rest. Unfortunately, we can not be quite sure how many unwanted people we have excluded. It seems quite a few are still getting through.
Its such an old idea that sex amounts to procreative behavior exercised only when a person makes the decision that the relationship is worth committing to and worth bearing fruit. Perhaps the best theory is that only some people are able to pass on the abstinence gene. Still, some of us are learning to trust people more and more each day to make their own decisions, and find their own happiness.
3
Is this nonsensical abstinence policy at H.H.S. a result of the heavy hand of right wing Evangelicals operating at that federal department? My suspicion is that the Fake President's most-favored religion is also tinkering over there, seeking to impose its extremist dogma on the rest of America including consenting adults.
Has the notorious satyr who now occupies the Oval Office ever in his life "just said no"?
46
Margaret Sanger was thrown into jail a hundred years ago for daring to teach women abut family planning.
The Pill has been available for 50+ years. Many other effective methods of birth control are now available.
Groups like Planned Parenthood and Emily's List are well known and assertive.
The internet is full of information about birth control.
Women are in, perhaps, their strongest position to fight against the backlash, patriarchal balderdash being spouted by the hypocrites known as the "Christian Right".
So, let's get out there and fight. Maybe we can get some help from the New York Times Editorial Board.
The students at Parkland, and across this country have made it pretty clear they are not depending on help from the "adults" on any topic. Hooray for them.
61
You’re not going to change any of the minds of these religions crusaders. November 2018 is the only hope.
1
I wonder if a smoking gun for Trump supporters would be a situation similar to that of Tim Murphy - avidly anti-abortion, yet encouraged his mistress to have one. Despite the false alarm of pregnancy, this abhorrent text message lead to his resignation.
Stormy Daniels claimed that Trump did not use a condom. Would it be too much to ask for a text message between them (or between Trump and any one of Trump's paramours, preferably a more current one) that discussed birth control?
20
The whole idea of promoting abstinence as opposed to safe-sex is to punish the (1) good-looking kids and (2) the poor kids. Those are the two groups that are having sex during the teenage years. It's rotten to the core.
6
Not sure how you chose these groupings. The abstinence-only mantra rather than birth-control education affects all young people. There's already a ton of misunderstandings or misinformation out there in Middle and High Schools (maybe even college). Actual facts and access to contraceptives are crucial for everyone in love, trying to be in love, or 'hooking up' for whatever reason, who do not wish to become pregnant.
4
This administration cannot leave the stage soon enough.
41
Wait a minute? Are you calling republicans 1950 hypocrites still pushing patriarchy? The biggest joke is most of the male republicans generally older men couldn’t get it up if they had to but they are still trying to control others sex lives. I give it one or two more elections and they will all be in nursing homes.
22
No, they'll be using low-priced Viagra/Cialis provided by their Caddilac congressional health care plan.
There is nothing wrong with thinking premarital sex is wrong. Americans everywhere believe in anything under the sun. But what is absolutely fiendish is thinking abstinence-only education is effective. The proponents are wasting our taxes on a fantasy.
33
Abstinence works about as well as dieting, 95 Percent failure rate over the long term. And in teen age time, long term is measured in months, if not weeks. Sure, count on abstinence. And start buying diapers and baby formula. This is like preparing for monsoon season by removing the roof on your house. Completely nonsensical.
47
The idea of a man, who paid to silence a porn star, presuming to set the tone on how our nation handles sexual matters - boggles the mind. "Do as I say, not as I do."
Men in general need to remove themselves from this topic. They need have no say in what any woman does with her uterus.
We need balanced, accurate sex education. And options which complement abstinence as a choice, and to support women without partners who choose to bring an unplanned child into the world. It takes two people to biologically create a life and one of those is male. Why do women bear all the burdens in this model?
45
If the me-too crowd really wants to do something they could help women by establishing independent organizations that provide sex education, birth control, abortions and legal help even if that means getting women out of state or out of country. Let the fat, old white guys go to blazes.
15
Public schools health education curriculum and programs are affected by these 'abstinence only' policies, much to everyone's dismay. Yes, independent agencies have important role to play-- ever heard of Planned Parenthood or Women's Crisis Centers? But it is dark humor indeed to hear of these priapic politicians vamping pious abstinence as a means of family planning.
8
Your comment inspired me to donate a few minutes ago to Planned Parenthood, the closest thing we have to what you describe. Thank you for suggesting action.
3
I’ve also heard of states that make it difficult to impossible to access birth control and abortion and who fight federal funds for Planned Parenthood. Independence from government, a cooperative system, is what’s needed.
The graphic for this editorial is horribly out of date and culturally harmful. The idea that men are "bees" that buzz from sedentary female flower to flower is really an archaic remnant of patriarchal rape culture supported by specious "evolutionary" theory largely debunked in recent years. (See Cordelia Fine's "Testosterone Rex" which won the Royal Society's science book of the year award for 2017). Do you really want to invoke a metaphor used by the "King" in "The King and I?"
6
I think the point is the bell jar; the bees and flowers are, well, bees and flowers.....
2
You forgot to mention that the New Era of Abstinence is mostly due to the #MeToo movement, a liberal phenomenon, which seeks to criminalize and inhibit sexual behavior in the population (regardless of how well-intentioned it purports to be).
3
On what basis do you reach this conclusion, Eugene? Please explain. Abstinence-only education has been an unwavering shibboleth of evangelicals for decades. It’s recent resurgence under Trump has little to do with #metoo, and more to do with blatant pandering to his political base.
2
You forgot to mention any actual evidence to support your (entirely specious) contention.
2
If you want to know how well abstinence works, take a look at the Victorian age. Families with 10 or 15 children, illegitimate kids farmed off into the countryside to be worked to death, women exhausted by endless pregnancies and not incidentally, a lot of infanticide. Contraception (in which I include abortion) is the greatest invention in history because it has liberated half of the human species to be thinking beings rather than breeding animals. Sex is necessary for a happy and fulfilling life for both men and women. Children are optional.
38
If only the President would practice what he preached.
13
Moving backwards at warp speed. Sad.
24
Abstinence teaching is sheer ignorance. People are going to have sex, especially young people. This is what happens when religious beliefs set public policy rather than using fact based scientific methods to determine the best way to educate the public on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs.
17
This hypocrisy helps him hold the Christian Evangelicals, who back Trump because he “supports” their views, though he doesn’t practice them...
And,, they say, he will be forgiven by their deity for his sins because he does so.
8
The wife of the famous O.B. doctor in Seattle who carried his nine children for their full nine months used to quietly appear at the Catholics schools mothers club about a half an hour after her husband finished his presentation on the rhythm method of contraception.
Her subject was Vatican Roulette. She explained that after her first child, the rhythm method worked for about a year. Then pregnancy! Eight more times.
Need I say more?
And how did their marriage succeed till death did them apart? (Natural death, not murder.) He was the ant in their marriage and a bit of a natural sour puss.
His wife was the grasshopper queen, happy go lucky, brilliant, wonderful mom, and as crazy as can be.
3
Make no mistake.
This right-wing inspired push is basically designed to increase the number of births in the US(preferably white ones)
8
It is not a surprise that the misogynistic cave men in this administration are preaching abstinence for young people.They have ruined the lives of many women with their many marriages and dalliances.They have no respect for women and will provoke another million women march for their reproductive rights.It is beyond cruel to deny youth the choices available to them so they can grow up with responsibility and dignity.
16
The #45 White House spreads cognitive dissonance like frosting on a cake. Fox News serves it for breakfast lunch and dinner everyday.
8
The best cake too, no doubt.
1
It's obviously no accident that people who are unable to take adult responsibility for their own sexual lives favor policies toward sex & reproduction that depend on self-righteousness & moralizing instead of helping.
6
I went to a private all-girls middle and high school in a liberal community. In 9th grade everyone took the required "health class," which was taught by an amazing female gym teacher.
We learned about sex firstly through a biological lens. We then got a thorough explanation of all major STDs/STIs, going over modes of transmission, symptoms, and prevention. In tandem, we learned about safe sex, distinguishing between birth control methods that prevent pregnancy and methods that also prevent STDs/STIs.
(Separately, we also learned about drugs and alcohol in terms of how each substance affects humans, from the positive and negative physical and psychological effects to the short and long term risks.)
Crucially, all of this information was presented to us 14/15-year olds in a frank, non-judgmental way.
There was none—zero, zilch—of this ridiculous guilt-tripping about sexual urges, nor was there anything that could have been misinterpreted or taken even remotely as any sort of encouragement or a "go-ahead" to become sexually active...especially following STD/STI unit (after which I declared to my friends, on my own volition, that I never wanted to have sex as long as I lived, only somewhat joking).
In short, we all walked away armed with knowledge and a healthy amount of caution.
It upsets me that so many teenagers are denied this, and instead left to fend for themselves thanks to adults who pass off their own ignorance and prudishness as having moral authority.
33
Fantastic! The health classes your school offered should mirror all other health classes in every other middle or high school across the US.
6
We had the same classes in my California public schools back in the 60's. It is a bit terrifying that the "Christian" right are still fighting against sex education and birth control.
3
another reason to be ashamed to be an american. this is a nation that celebrates greed and "belief" over decency and reason.
13
I am not nor ever have been ashamed of America. Nasty people like the Christian Conservatives and the Trumps are shameful bit they are not America.
1
Something like 96% of Americans have non-marital sex, which means that most abstinence education is promoted by, taught by, and the curriculum is written by people who have not been abstinent before marriage. Given that teens have a radar for hypocrisy, my guess is most of them know this.
9
Trump seems to think borders are going to control the population and keep the excess out of the US. Hunger and sex are forces greater than Trump and any wall. The only solution is worldwide birth control and the US as the cultural leader should be in the forefront. The lack of support for it in the US makes it impossible for the third world to effectively implement it. Efforts are characterized as genocide etc. Overpopulation is already here and it is a much greater threat than even nuclear power. This picture from the independent says it all. One man in Pakistan and 36 children. Can the planet sustain that? The US should be a leader and leading is by example. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/pakistan-population-muslim...
3
I think this is a great thing. Bristol Palin showed us how successful preaching and living a life of abstinence is. Well, except for her first out of wedlock child. And I suppose, her second out of wedlock child. Okay, never mind.
27
And yet, a mom I know, talking about how she has taught her children to be abstinent before marriage (hint: they aren't), told me proudly that her church had Bristol Palin giving a speech about abstinence to its youth group - this AFTER the second pregnancy.
2
Hypocrisy is a weak charge, mostly because the law provides remedies for graver offenses. That is why hypocrisy is often called "breathtaking." The charge needs all the help it can get. (And nobody's breath is ever taken, either.)
1
You could take Trumps' policies on religion and public health and have them spoken by Iranian mullahs. All that is missing is the garb.
It would be offensive, divisive and counterproductive if Trump actually believed these things,but as he doesn't, it just shows how many he is willing to throw under the bus to keep his ego ensconced in the Oval Office. No one is to big or too small to be sacrificed. We'd do better with a national volcano toss.
Obviously, abstinence only education is as effective as "Just Say No" campaigns for drugs.
Festering behind Trump's policies on religion and sex is a nasty mix of fear, and religious certitude that can morph into religious zealotry. When you combine that with an inherent white supremacy - the fear on the far right that we will have too few white children - you get a return to abstinence policy.
Trump's way of draining the swamp is to poison the water. Only the swamp monsters survive.
11
Historically rampant sexuality (the 60s) does not enhance public
health, causing a spike in sexually transmitted diseases, 'let it all hang out' has seen its day. Abstinence, amongst other
behaviour guidelines undergirds Conservative philosophy
just as advocations for a more 'free' and 'open' society undergirds the Liberal cause. One's views depends on which Church you have been programmed to attend.
1
I don't know exactly why, but this issue brings Sarah Palin to mind. Where is she, anyway?
8
“Bethany Kozma, a senior adviser for gender equality and women’s empowerment at the United States Agency for International Development, called America a “pro-life nation,” stunning delegates from other countries.”
Oh please! We are no where near being a pro-life nation, and there is no “pro-life” movement. If anything, it’s all about and only about being pro-birth.
8
"Pro-life" nations have some form of universal health care. Our nation is "pro insurance/big pharm/health care networks." forget life.
1
Pro-life would suggest ongoing care and dedication to those lives suffering in refugee camps and prisons and chronically ill folks who can't afford healthcare...
Our President specializes in abstinence from truth.
Abstinence from sex is not a personal concern of his.
27
This isn’t about science or facts or morality - this is about power over others - women, to be precise. The hypocrisy is blatant. Trump is pandering to his base - and his base is showing they’d do a deal with Devil to get want they want.
All their talk of values, morals, etc. is lies to cover what they really want: authority over others.
17
I am in full support of abstinence and pro-life.
1
Good for you. So am I but I'm also in favor of sex education, readily available contraceptives too. Oh and I'm anti war and anti death penalty too.
4
Question: What do you call parents who believe the only sex information their hormone-driven adolescent/teenage children need is abstinence-only sex education.
Answer: Grandma and grandpa
16
One way to ensure teen pregnancy will rise along with STDs, is to teach abstinence only. Science based sex-Ed for all. Want your teenager to abstain, lead by example and do your best. Don’t make up stories of eternal damnation or shame.
8
It’s obvious. Mr. T doesn’t like protected sex. He, obviously, has never worn a condem and doesn’t see why any other male should either.
May the 31st be Trump-Free!
3
Abstinence education is a slush fund for evangelical Christians and nothing more. they are being PAID cash money for their support for Trump, and in the background burrowing into our system of government with the zealotry of terrorists.
I worked with evangelicals who don't pay Fed taxes at all. Any letters were taken to their pastor. And we're never seen or heard from again.
As usual, talk of the deep state is a reflection of their own status in that deep state. Republicans are so dumb and mean they can only accuse the Dems of doing something the GOP already does.
I worked for an evangelical company in the late 90s that was committing nationwide Federal fraud. I went to the NYT and to CBS with the physical proof in the form of co tracts signed and paid, and an outline of the scam and how it functioned. No interest.
George W. Bush legalized that fraud as one of his first points of business.
9
If abstinence worked, Donald Trump would not have a Stormy Daniels problem. Likewise, all manner of preachers would not have been forced from their pulpits in disgrace due to sexual indiscretions. The urge to sexually procreate and recreate is far too powerful for a simplistic prohibition. Instead of ignorance and denial, the government should be promoting knowledge of our reality as human beings. With such knowledge, we can all make better choices, both as individuals and as a society.
6
“...Beyond that, abstinence-only education keeps all people who are subjected to it in the dark about critical aspects of their health, and treats a normal part of life — sexuality, and women’s sexuality in particular — as aberrant and shameful...”
You wanna know what’s aberrant and shameful? The Trump administration.
3
It seems Mike Pence is getting his two-pence worth. He's no doubt the voice behind this nonsense, just as he's absolutely the voice behind Trump's recent proclamation that we need a government agency to protect religious bigoted zealots from the gay community.
12
"In reality, programs that use creative ways to educate teenagers about contraception are one reason teen pregnancy in the United States has plummeted in recent years."
Yes, that's reality, but we can't connect reality with Trump - he's built his own sick world where what's evil is good and what's good is evil.
When children die on his watch - he demands EASIER access to murder weapons
When people earning minimum wage want to wait to have children until they are prepared, he takes AWAY their birth control
When he has sex with PORN workers, he pays out 5 figure BRIBES to keep it a secret - but brutalizes woman with a global gag rule preventing family planning services from performing or promoting abortions, so women in poverty have to have more babies they can't feed.
He's making himself richer and RICHER off the backs of these people who have to live in the sick, mean and tragic reality he created for them.
Send him a message - we want OUR world back, Mr Trump.
16
Abstinence works. That is why the 6 states that claim that abstinence is the solution out-of-wedlock pregnancies have the highest rates of of teen pregnancy: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky, and Louisiana.
23
Maybe, while they’re at it, they can outlaw divorce, prohibit the prosecution of spousal abuse and make pregnant women and new mothers stay at home to raise their kids by themselves. I mean, if we’re going to go backwards, let’s do it right.
10
Yes, bring on Gilead.
Trump has no interest in abstinence. He is interested in doing whatever he is told to do by his right wing base. That is the extent of his interest in anything.
Trump is a mindless, empty headed, egotist who has squandered his life on meaningless activities that have served his own best interest and harmed many others in the process.
I do not agree with this opinion bringing his daughter into the discussion.
1
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. Why do we keep this program going? This kids keep doing it anyway. I wish they would not but they do. Stop the madness!
3
The core problem with lying to your (our) children is that they will find out some of the things taught are lies. Then, they will simply reject everything. Of course without the (also banned) critical thinking skills, the chances that our children will ever make good decisions in anything is much reduced. What a gift to offer our children.
Abstinence only propaganda is worse than most--because only the InCel crazies will actually achieve "abstinence" (to their anger, disgust and despair). So some wish to teach a behavior that almost none of their students will actually practice. There is no evidence the teaching does much more than delaying first sex by a couple of months, while increasing the chances that sex will be unprotected.
So the benefit of "abstinence only" sex ed is to ensure more pregnancies out of wedlock (and in it) and more STD infections. And to make more children reject everything their parents try and teach them.
Republicans sure have strange goals.
6
If the idea is to prevent people from having babies, then abstinence should be a part. Introducing them to abortive surgery is evil.
Do you know what prevents people from having babies? Contraception, esp. long term contraception like IUDs. States that promote abstinence only as "birth control" have higher rates of teen age births than states that teach about real/science based, birth control.
4
President P.T. Barnum stopped paying attention to anything going on, and cemented his thinking, somewhere around the 1980's. He's locked into that 80's mindset...
Greed is good.
Just say no.
Welfare Queens.
Government is the problem.
He hasn't grown one iota as a person since that time. An aging Gordon Gecko. Sad.
3
Jennifer of Ossining,
You mention that some girls and women deliberately have babies out of wedlock. I recently met such a woman who now has two sons in their early twenties who have never met their fathers. She deliberately had these children out of wedlock because her biological clock (her words) was running out so she decided to do parenthood alone. I think it was extremely selfish of her to deprive her sons of a live-in father to satisfy her own needs. I am sure there must be resentment at this mother for not marrying the father and not having him present in the household. All children want a mother and father and it must have been difficult growing up seeing their friends raised in a two-parent household.
Liberals will say that a woman can do what she wants with her body and life, but she never thought of the consequences. Of course, circumstances such as a divorce or death may occur, but at least the parent was married. I am old fashioned but we should start thinking of our children and their needs and not just our own. This woman never took into account her children and their feelings and I would pity any son who grew up in this household. I am not judging her but I think she made a foolish decision and may rue the day she allowed this to happen. I am just speaking the truth.
1
You are judging her. The minute you said she only thought of herself you judged her. You have no idea who, what, where, why she did what she did, yet you chastise her in the name of societal expectations. Children don’t need two people to raise them. And certainly in today’s society they don’t need a man and a woman to do it. There are many, many variations of families in this world. Just because you “believe” that a family is a father, mother and children doesn’t mean other types of families are less than. It’s narrow minded thinking like this that puts people off.
4
“The administration’s approach defies all common sense.” But why look for common sense? This is for Trump’s base, who “forgive” his obscene behavior as long as he pushes their religious agenda.
2
What clearer embodiment is there of the slapdash cynicism of this administration? In playing to his base like the craven opportunist that he is, Trump's policy will have the opposite effect of its intentions and won't even bother to check the results.
2
This is all about keeping poor girls and women in their place and punishing them for being poor--by evangelical definition not industrious enough to pull themselves out of poverty.
Women at or below poverty level are dependent on government programs for birth control since they literally cannot afford it otherwise. And married women who are poor want and need birth control as much or more than unmarried ones, since having another child would just drive them further down. Is it just or reasonable to expect these women to be abstinent?
And what about those in abusive relationships they feel they cannot afford to leave or feel they cannot leave because of threats to their personal safety? Abstinence in such cases is often meaningless, where sex is forced or where submission is preferable to being beaten to a pulp.
Trump's programs not only expose these women to unwanted pregnancies, they prohibit them as a practical matter from obtaining abortions. And if Trump and his evangelical base have their way, these poor women will also be denied aid for their dependent children--children they would not have conceived if they could have afforded otherwise. And so they are ground further and further and further into the hole.
And all the while the evangelicals--who would not recognize true Christianity if Jesus himself confronted them--smile down at these poor women from their sanctimonious high horse, bleating "family values."
16
What do they call couples who practice the rhythm method? Parents.
3
I was under the “abstinence program” growing up, but that was not a conscious decision made by me but instead was one made collectively by all the women who knew me.
2
Growing up in restrictive societies, abstinence was the way of life for me and I was and am very much happy for that. I would have been exploited, raped and ended up in back alleys butchered. if it were anything else. THANK GOD, for arranged marriage, of course with 100% consent. I am happily married for over 28 years with two beautiful children!
1
For various reasons based on my upbringing, I did the “right” thing and I waited until I was married. Apparently, I was told your husband is supposed to appreciate you more. However, as far as I am concerned it was a huge mistake. Sex was really disappointing. At first, he blamed me and I blamed myself. Counselling has not helped. We are just not compatible, we like different things. It is too late now, we have children and financial commitments and I am not in a position to leave. Nor am I as young and pretty as I once was. While I certainly would not push my children out there, I have decided this tradition is going to die with me. I would not recommend abstinence to anyone. I think it is important to learn what you like and what you don’t before you make a lifelong commitment. Otherwise, you are making the most important decision of your life with no information. Sure, my children were born in wedlock and I have never had an abortion, just a lifetime of dissatisfaction. Marriage doesn’t make everything okay.
371
There are thousands, if not millions, of women in every generation who've also experienced what you describe. Hence the absolute miracle of The Pill, of society's broadmindedness towards folks living together before legal marriage, and no-fault divorce.
54
And in a patriarchal society brimming with misogyny, structural indifference to female dissatisfaction is a given. Ultimately it is up to women to continue the fight to reclaim our bodies, our sexuality and our economic freedom from the smiling semi-conscious oppressors, like the current VP of your great nation.
26
you are just as pretty, you just do not know it. I agree with your views. my x was in the delivery room while I had a c section. did not stop him from whoring around and leaving me with an infant. no government should tell you what to do with your sex life. why doesn't trump "just say no"????
13
No doubt Pence is on board and driving the train. He doesn't even believe in pre-marital eye contact.
2
I love the idea of abstinence!
For Republican men. Donald Trump. Rudy Giuliani. Newt Gingrich. Missouri’s Governor Eric Greitens who tried to blackmail his mistress by attaching her to some exercise equipment and taking photographs (Greitens fired up his career as a publicly self-righteously Pro-Life advocate). Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy, another preachy Pro-Lifer who pressed his illicit lover to get an abortion. And so many more! It would be a pretty big class.
Sadly, staging classroom discussions and coaxing these students to write confessional essays won’t be a sufficient deterrent to keep them abstinent and free of sexual taint. So I recommend male chastity belts. They might pinch a bit. Not quite sure how they’d be designed, but they would lock tight, automatically, when the man in question spoke hypocritical opportunistic political self-righteous lies and then headed out to seek, um, entertaining company.
Not sure Health and Human Services has the resources for this substantial project. So we’ll need a new department. Let’s call it the Tables Turning Department.
Would that work?
7
SO frustrating - esp. as I live in a pseudo-liberal town where young couples are breeding out of control, destroying the environment, driving SUVs, busing kids for the sake of busing,
and the women at the abortion clinic who can't afford to have kids because the rich are gobbling up all the resources, are harassed endlessly by anti-abortion protesters.
My parents were using condoms in the 1950s, ten years before I was born. Their family was planned. I was the only "accident," and it would have saved my mother and me a lot of pain if she could have aborted me. That last pregnancy was a disaster and left us both chronically ill. Unplanned pregnancies should be a thing of the past. The resources are there. But our gov't would rather redistribute money to the rich.
2
Just another thing our representative form of government ignores the majority AND the evidence-based research on. Teen pregnancy will once again rise thanks to the “christians.”
2
But this is an example of why the Christian right support Trump: he is the Trojan (irony ) horse to carry their agenda the legislation. Of course, this was not part of the populist agenda that won the election - these were the secret side-deals like Dr Faustus made.
4
The Anti-Sex League portrayed in Orwell's 1984...I can't quite see the US go all the way down that road, but teaching abstinence and the Iowa's abortion law seem to be pushing that way.
2
"The administration’s approach defies all common sense."
Yes.
3
Handmaid's Tale
8
Every politician who promotes abstinence-only propaganda should be asked at every single public forum & by every single reporter how many children have they adopted. They would each need to adopt hundreds to handle the backlog of unwanted children in the U.S.
2
Abstinence only education promotes a shocking level of biological and reproductive ignorance. With that ignorance comes a great deal of shame too. Shame causes people to stay quiet about issues regarding sexual health and sexual violence. Worse yet, it does not work. It does not prevent sexual intercourse. It does not prevent rape. It does not prevent pregnancies or abortions. You know what does? Comprehensive sex education. Access to birth control and reproductive care. Open non-judgemental dialog. So why promote abstinence only if it harms more than it helps? Votes, votes, votes. It has never been about what is best for the country, or women, or about what actually works. America needs to file away abstinence only education along with trickle down economics. PLEASE.
8
This discussion about controlling women and their bodies is sheer nonsense. This is so typical when the topic of abortion or any other women's issue comes up. The woman of today is independent and does not let anyone tell her what to do. She has a mind of her own and makes her own decisions. Unfortunately, when that decision involves abortion she is ending an innocent life. She does not see it that way but it is more then just a blob of cells. It is a living, breathing human being.
1
You have got to be kidding me! I am almost speechless to learn of this.
With no scientific or common sense data to support the effectiveness of the rhythm method to accomplish anything at all except get women pregnant on a regular basis, and being a clear risk to public health, the courts have to find that this is a obscene entanglement of church and state.
Planned Parenthood should be defunded as they are the largest abortion provider in the country. They do not need public funds but should exist through private funds if they want to provide services. I do not want my tax dollars paying for abortions which is tantamount to murder.
I do pro life work outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Manhattan and since we have had a police presence, there have been no pro abortion protesters in sight. They appeared before the police were called but have since lost steam. I think the police frightened them away. I guess they were not really into the pro abortion cause or they became cowards. Their efforts proved futile as there were over three times as many pro life folks as pro abortion people. Our efforts paid off as we are still in business so to speak. I must add we quietly rally whereas they were loud and crass. We now are left in peace thank goodness.
2
Your efforts to shame and pressure those entering the clinic are more crass than anything a pro-choice protester could shout or brandish via written word. The circumstances surrounding any given abortion are the concern of the woman who has opted for the procedure, often surrounded by stress and involving a non-viable pregnancy that was actually desired. Peaceful, indeed.
6
Big Brother should - make the minimum wage, a living wage - AND pay for the reception, so young people have a path to be married before sex.
Oh, I forgot, the American Dream choices as defined by the last Jerry Falwell Jr and Friends Conference are:
(a) don't have sex, until you can afford it (never, if need be); OR
(b) get pregnant due to disinformation and new barriers to birth control, Big Brother is done 'helping'; OR
(c) identify a Christian couple as preferred adoptive parents, Big Brother is done 'helping'.
1
Abstinence! You have to be kidding. When in my teens I got engaged to my wife, now married 54 years. Abstinence just wasn't in the playbook for either of us. Both sets of parents sweated it out until we married, then another 6 months of worry to make sure. Then their perceived crisis passed. And we were just lucky. Now have three wonderful sons.
For goodness sakes these folks are living in the stone age. We really need to get a new administration before we're flooded with more teen pregnancies. Rolling the dice is not a very good approach.
218
Yeah - Sarah Palin was strongly in favor of abstinence only - ask Bristol how that worked out...
28
While all the pundits talk about how the tax cut is helping middle class families (while prices of goods go up beyond the temporary pay increases from the tax cuts and while most of us will pay more in taxes from the tax cut) the fabric of our society is fraying. Thank you for this editorial showing this concrete example of how we are being hurt in this country.
12
When are Democrats going to get the message that their precious Federal government programs are fully corrupted by the Trump administration. The only proper response is to defund those agencies so the Trump people have no funds with which to do their damage.
This notion is foreign to liberals, but it is about time they admit that the era of Federal solutions has passed, and the best response is to cut off those programs completely, return the tax money to the taxpayers, and fund the programs st the state level. The current situation is just taking our money and making the problems worse.
11
When will Conservatives ever learn that Congress controls the budget, and currently that means them?
When will same conservatives stop lying about how much they care about our money when they spend it so freely?
14
The Red states would soon realize that it is THEIR Federal Government too when they stop receiving more federal funding than what they contribute in taxes to federal coffers.
6
All we get from our states is unequal protection of law and sabotage of the federal government.
3
We and they all know it is going to result in more pregnancies.
And we know they use contraceptives.
I have never been able to figure out their motives.
I believe part is to create sides and tribal politics.
But it seems like more than that.
They like to fight?
I am open for theories.
16
It is purely and simple the Evangelical and other fanatical religions who want to stop abortions. And stop funding for ibirth control. I am not aganist religion (I have my own Christian faith) but in my opinion the Church needs to stay out of these government funded programs for family planning. Trump is all consumed with their support of him and he's doing their bidding. It's ridiculous, the teenage pregnancy rate will rise quickly. I used Family Planning and Planned Parenthood as a young woman. I'm not in favor of abortion. But there are better ways to educate womenon those issues than shutting down programs to address decent health care for women in this area as well.
1
It's pretty simple: controlling women.
8
And they still act as if real infants, children, and adults aren't worthy of the basics in life. Protect embryos and fetuses but do nothing to ensure that the children that are born are wanted, fed, clothed, and cared for so that they can grow into productive adults. What is wrong with them? What is wrong with Americans that we keep on supporting this sort of idiocy? How many unwanted children must be born, abused, and possibly killed before we decide that women are more than just baby making machines and that every child deserves to be welcomed with love and cherished?
170
God love you and thank you! I have a wealthy, male, Ph.D. educated cousin that voted for this horrid man because he would appoint judges to overturn abortion. Ask my cousin how many poor disadvantaged children he has adopted or fostered. The answer is Zero.
25
Right on!
5
To Henry
These folks probably take the Monty Python song 'Every Sperm is Sacred' very seriously. Can't believe how backward Amerika has become, thought things were pretty bad during the Reagan years, too.
9
Trump's background is exactly why he can't stand up to those on "his side" who demand "moral" positions on things like sex.
The more the other side and press trumpets Stormy as the be all and end all of the news, the more Trump must step back behind the loons of abstinence.
This is a symptom of our dysfunction, and not just Trump's dysfunction. Bernie offered the wisdom days after the election that Trump could be co-opted and used. He could be, or at least could have been. That has been scorned, the very possibility shut down.
So now you howl that you've got what you wanted.
And you could have had a Bernie, then you could have had his approach to Trump.
Instead, you backed Hillary, and then her "it is everyone else's fault, they are all evil" and hate-Trump.
As Bernie pointed out, you don't have to like the guy to use him. Who better to look away from someone else's sexual choices? Even the Pope says "Who am I to judge" and yet in this promising moment Trump is backed into the only support available, loons-for-abstinence.
8
Bernie leading Trump around by the nose? Fat chance of that.
1
If you know anything of Bernie's history you would know that he had some pretty looney uninformed ideas about sex himself so this is probably not the topic upon which women are going to regret that he wasn't elected
3
We are told that abstinence education doesn’t work. Kids just don’t listen. So the issue here is teaching things that kids ignore. We’re talking about somewhere between $50m-$100m in program expenses for about 20m teens. That’s less than $5 per kid. That investment amounts to next to nothing. If it assures that the abstinence teacher keeps his hands off my kids, the $5 is worth it. Really, this seems like a big deal about not much.
4
Thank you for this editorial. We need more reporting in the media, particularly by cnn and msnbc, of these very real and substantive policy changes that can only hurt this country. We NEED workers, both men and women. Society and our economy benefit when women can control their own bodies. Trump the candidate swore he was not a backwards ultra right zealot. Yet here we are.
48
These are not "Christians" they are hypocrites. I recommend a course of the gospels.
Sure, everybody should be old-fashioned and monogamous like you virtuous posters. But in our modern world, it's not that simple. Nor is it a protection against abuse and rape. We have to make our way as best we can.
Don't forget, pride is said be the worst sin, the self-regard that makes you think yourself god.
Remember Bristol Palin! A classic case. And those women whose husbands bring home VD while their spiritual advisers tell them no contraception.
Even married people should have the right to plan their families and support them.
78
As has been said elsewhere here, saying "no" assumes the partner will take "no" for an answer. People need options.
45
I'll believe the male politicians (who are generally in charge of these things ) are serious about pregnancy prevention when they pass a law that abstinence-only applies to males.
After all, all men can create a pregnancy but not all women can get pregnant.
Seriously, this new focus on and finance is not based on religious pro-life ideology. it's based on misogyny. it's based on controlling women and keeping them in their place, barefoot and pregnant, married or not.
The perfect example of GOP hypocrisy on abortion or pregnancy can be seen in the persona of Elliott broidy-- very married, very Republican, and all too eager to have Donald Trump's fixer help him pay off a woman he impregnated during an extramarital affair who presumably got an abortion.
expecting abstinence in a sex drenched culture makes about as much sense as male-only abstinence--my point exactly.
we aren't living in a Margaret Atwood novel--or are we?
Want to prevent abortions? Promote birth control.
212
Actually, not all men can create a pregnancy. Infertility applies to men and women. Men just don't usually admit it or point to a woman as the reason for a reproduction failure. I've heard men I know are infertile dismiss other men with a flippant"he can't get it up" comment as to their prowess in sports or business.
6
You need a biology lesson. Not all men can create a pregnancy.
4
Although not all men can create a pregnancy, all right wingers will blame the woman 100% of the time!
7
It's not about abstinence. It's about teaching women who's boss and making sure that they are production lines for cheap labor and unlimited cannon fodder.
157
It is President Trump's administration that is pushing for abstinence and he is willingly going along. Why not? Why force young people and even adults into engaging in premarital sex? Liberals will say it is a natural part of life but you do not need sex to exist. I am all for sexual relations but within a loving marital relationship. Sex is one of the most intimate forms of life but should not be taken lightly. Today too many people engage in sex without any feeling of love or commitment. This has cheapened our society and has resulted in an anything goes attitude that is unhealthy.
Call me old fashioned but I am happy and have never allowed myself to be used sexually by another. My husband and I have a satisfying life and never regretted waiting until marriage before having sex. It may have been unusual but it worked for us. There is more to life than sex and married couples enjoy sex far more than singles. Another bonus. You never have to worry about an unintended pregnancy.
10
Can’t help a chuckle - every couple I know who relied on NFP (whether you call it Natural Family Planning or Natural Fertility Plotting) had at least one unintended pregnancy. Never failed!
51
“Liberals” probably do think “sex is a natural part of life.” Because... it is. And contraception reduces abortions, legal or otherwise. An impartial observer would conclude that abstinence advocates are secretly lobbyists for abortion providers.
24
Wow.
Comprehensive sex education doesn't force anyone to have sex and marriage doesn't prevent unintended pregnancies.
26
Abstinence education could be a good counter weight to the thrust of our consumerist hyper-sexual cultural. I mean are they still teaching kids how their bodies work — menstruation, ovulation, and so on? I hope so but a little aside to abstinence could be helpful against the onslaught of Cosmo and porn.
I heavily schooled my children in abstinence as soon as they starting asking where babies came from. I just laid out the whole thing as per my belief system.
So far it seems to be working well enough. I did have one child who got very serious — hot and heavy — with a teenage love interest. I like to think that early childhood lessons (indoctrination?) stopped my child from going “all the way.” What’s fascinating, though, is that a couple of far more liberal parents (one who had no business being involved) were far more upset than I was.
Sexuality is tremendously complicated at the best of times never mind when it involves vulnerable young people. I’m sure if parents are worried they can set their child up with an educational pod cast. Although if I needed to find that sort of thing I’d ask my teens where.
4
It's programs like this which explain why evangelicals support Mr. Trump despite his personal pecadillos. Unfortunately irrational programs rarely lead to good outcomes.
49
Society is in continuous unstoppable movement.
Sexual behavior and it’s accepted changes , television , literature , communication technology etc have been adapting to this new evolving sexual culture and are undisputed facts .
The evangelicals, GOP , trump , religious zealots are rowing against the current trying to stop or diverge its course.
America is not and will never be a theocracy or a dictatorship , the battle against sexual freedom is already lost .
America must improve access and affordability to women’s healthcare and education, fund Planned Parenthood and all entities dealing with the sexual aspects of life .
A civil society is based on education and freedom .
31
It is the Trump administration that is promoting abstinence not Donald Trump. He has appointed many pro life people to his cabinet which accounts for the abstinence programs being recommended. If the previous programs which included contraception were so effective, why are so many young people getting pregnant out of wedlock. 40 percent of white babies and 72 percent of black babies have been born to unmarried mothers. Obviously, the contraceptive method has been a failure.
The surest way to avoid an unwanted pregnancy is by abstaining from sex. This is the best birth control method and never fails. Why not give it a try. By the way, it is now referred to as natural family planning. The term rhythm method has not been used in years. Many couples practice this and find it effective.
5
Having a child out of wedlock doesn’t mean that the pregnancy was unintentional. Plenty if adults choose to start families without marrying.
34
Actually, unintended pregnancy could be very much a result of the abstinence education, because its advice is difficult to follow and because it is doesn't educate about contraception.
40
Jennifer,
Don't you think it is better for the woman to be married before having children not just for the children's sake but also for her own? There is not the stigma of having an out-of-wedlock birth today like there was in the 1950s, but a two parent home is still superior to a woman raising a child by herself. It is difficult with a mother and father bringing up children but it would be doubly hard for just the mother raising the child alone. She does not have the support of her husband and the discipline totally falls in her lap. She is probably working and she has to come home and tend to the child's needs on her own. I think it would not only be exhausting but depressing.
I know I am old fashioned but this is the way most women would desire it to happen. Having a husband to share in the joys and sorrows of parenthood is the way society intended parenthood to be. To deliberately set out getting pregnant without a husband in the picture is selfish and self centeredness. We are an egotistical society if we condone this sort of parenting and God help those children who through no fault of their own find themselves in this situation. Children not only deserve a mother and father but want to be raised in a two-parent home. We should not encourage single parenthood but foster marriage.
4
Talk about gross hypocrisy. The majority of citizens of the following six states who have been continuously promoting abstinence and are Trump’s biggest supporters are the ones with the highest rate of teen pregnancies: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky, and Louisiana. The 10 states with the lowest rates of teen pregnancies voted for Clinton: Massachusett, New Hampshire, Connecticut,Vermont, New Jersey, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Maine, and Wisconsin.
215
Amazing how that works.
10
The current world population is 7.6 Billion and climbing. The estimated maximum human population that the earth can sustain is estimated at 10 Billion. I'm 60 years old and in my lifetime the world population has grown by almost 5 Billion. This is not sustainable. Like it our not, we humans are an invasive species. We need to take measures to limit population growth for the sake of the planet and for future generations before it is too late.
191
Hear! Hear! Glad to hear someone else use the term "invasive species" to describe modern humans' relationship with the planet. I fear we're past the tipping point and soon drastic measures that nobody will want will be needed and it will not be pretty or easy.
50
Here are four "measures to limit population growth": War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. I think they were revealed in a book written a long time. We've got our top people working on the implementation now.
7
can I please 'like' this response X 1,000?
4
I started working at Planned Parenthood way back in 1976 teaching teenagers how to talk to other teenagers about family planning. I have dedicated the majority of my career since then working in family planning and maternal and child health. I am well aware of the war which Trump/Pence are waging against women domestically and Internationally. Apparently this is part of what they meant by "Make America Great Again."
Abstinence is targeted at women as Title X monies are redirected from programs which would provide reproductive health services to poor and indigent women. Young men are not affected by these programs because they do not run the risk of getting pregnant and it has always been expected that boys can have sex and that women should refrain from sex, especially when you consider the MAGA beliefs about immigrants, minorities, and women.
For those who support the abstinence movement and don't believe women need contraceptives consider these two important points; women with fibroid tumors often use oral contraceptives to manage their condition, and all contraceptives have a failure rate, even hysterectomies (look it up).
In Africa, where a man is most often the ruler of the house, abstinence will never be socially viable, instead, the woman will run a higher risk of death while delivering the baby or they may both die.
This is all about controlling women. This is all about life during the time of Trump.
243
Your spin does not erase the victims of these kinds of policies - generally women and the poor. Imposing a subjective moral policy on the country will not fix the dysfunction. Nor is acting like humans don't have sex outside the prescribed archaic, religious boundaries going to magically make us all behave in a way you deem appropriate.
Women are the persons who pay for repressive, moralistic, and backward policies, so YES, it is about controlling women. I suspect the fact that there will not be enough jobs due to automation and corporate malfeasance, as well as the paranoia of white supremacists who see breeding as a path to victory is the reason that pregnant and unemployed is the ultimate goal of regressive policies.
47
My 42 years in this field has shown me that you are incorrect. Forget the policy roll-out in the USA, why export this same policy to the rest of the world where women and children die during birth and funds vitally required which have been historically present in USAID's budgets are now being redirected towards abstinence and this will lead to the deaths of thousands of women and babies at birth.
BUT IT DOESN'T WORK. "The left" is, as usual, using solutions for problems that the evidence tells us will actually solve the problem. "The right" sees this as a "tactic", some kind of bias, or, misuse of statistics, or -- well, basically anything but a simple reflection of reality.
Our solution is the solution that's been proven to actually work. That's how you decide policy. When you have some evidence to back up your obviously strong feelings, give me a shout.
Great Editorial! Well timed for Creating Conversations.
The evidence about the failures of abstinence-based sex education has been clear for years. The evidence for the success of comprehensive sex education in schools, through appropriate community- based programs and media activities is also clear. Unfortunately evidence will never convince those who have the power to appropriate funding in Congress as long as US voters are tricked into voting for so-called "values" candidates. It is time to confront those who use their religions to keep US children uneducated about important life facts.
Denying women access to the medical tools to control their reproductive activities is perhaps the greater evil done by the sexual abstinence crowd. I share my home with two cats who believe if they hide their heads under the bed skirt, they are invisible. The elected officials who promote abstinence and women's access to effective contraception tools are like my cats thinking the problem has become invisible when they hide their heads.
Thank you for being honest about Trump's child born out of wedlock. We voters already know he has no respect for a marriage contract. We know from his failure to support tax policies which are family friendly that he cares little for children. Some may complain that his adult daughter should not be reminded of her birth status. Remember that her status as "out of wedlock" was a decision of her father, the current president of the US.
72
This is the ultimate version - or maybe the most perverted version is a better way to say it - of "do as i say and as i do."
But hey, what was an EPA admin doing in Morocco anyway? Or Mulvaney's paid access or cost cutting is for poor people.
Words like 'aberrant' and 'shameful' pale by comparison to the behavior of this bunch of deplorables
36
Abstinence works; preaching abstinence doesn't work; Donald Trump preaching abstinence belongs in The Onion.
Unbelievable.
335
@Howard: How many abortions do you suppose President Abstinence has paid for?
55
Sure it works. . . all the way until it doesn't. Abstinence as a rule is stupid and removed from reality. Deciding when and with whom to have sex, and knowing how to do so safely and without an unintended pregnancy is a useful and dignified approach to sex ed.
10
It is the role of educators to impart knowledge, not to dictate behavior, and certainly not to give incomplete, erroneous or biased information. Give people the facts about sexuality, preferably before they become active, and let them make decisions accordingly.
Moreover, what really advances the cause of life? Preventing the transmission of STDs (including HIV) and reducing those very unwanted pregnancies which contribute to abortion.
Young people are taught how to drive, an activity full of risks, by emphasizing safety. Sex Ed should similarly be approached, understanding that showing people how to be responsible will lead to more, not less, responsibility. It beats putting anyone's head in the sand and hoping for the best.
95
And DON’T give males & females different information. We were showed a ‘sex education’ tape in school, long ago. It told all about how females are built, how they grow babies, with line drawings of the body. Both boys & girls saw the same tape (separately). Took me a long time before I realized no mention about male anatomy was mentioned. Just that ‘sperm’ entered a woman. Not how, or with what. My Mother totally explained menstruation, more than most of my friends learned, but she had been taught it all by her father, a physician. Thinking back on it, I had no idea what a penis looked like (let alone what the word was FOR) until I saw my future husband naked. Yes we jumped the gun. Many even in the late 60’s & early 70’s still didn’t. I can’t imagine a young girl, seeing a naked man for the first time, on her wedding night. I was scared as I was woefully untaught about how male & female anatomy fit together. But, we had time to figure it out, before, on our wedding night we could make it what it should be, wonderful. Oh, we will have been married 47 years this year. I hope young girls get more than a female anatomy lesson before they see their first naked man. At least that stupid tape gave HIM an idea of where to plug ‘it’ in.
2
Unfortunately, for many women, avoiding sex is not an option. We often gloss over the unpleasant truth that many women are coerced, pressured and/or forced to have sex, in relationships where they lack the resources or opportunities to leave.
The idea that women and girls can protect themselves from pregnancy by "saying no" assumes that all men will take "no" for an answer. So for many women, contraceptives that the women can control themselves are essential for preventing pregnancy.
646
This is the most important post among the comments I've seen and I'd just like to repeat it so more people will see it:
"Unfortunately, for many women, avoiding sex is not an option. We often gloss over the unpleasant truth that many women are coerced, pressured and/or forced to have sex, in relationships where they lack the resources or opportunities to leave.
The idea that women and girls can protect themselves from pregnancy by 'saying no' assumes that all men will take 'no' for an answer. So for many women, contraceptives that the women can control themselves are essential for preventing pregnancy."
287
I am totally with Majorie and Howard. When I was young I was no match for men I met. 5' 2" and 105 lbs. Attractive, quiet and passive. The late sixties were a wild time. The so-called sexual revolution was a war against women having a choice to have sex sometimes.
5
Our town claims to be VERY conservative. Our public schools were seeing about 150 or more pregnant students every year. There was no sex ed at all in the public school system. A survey showed that 89.4% of those responding wanted age-appropriate sex ed, and the majority wanted abstinence plus...the most liberal allowed by Texas law, though still short of comprehensive sex ed. In the 6 years since it was instituted, student pregnancies have dropped 75%. It works!
254
I think you have a point there. Sometimes societies just have to run the experiment. Even if it's ill conceived. Once it blows up in their supporter's faces, and it will, common sense will prevail. A good dose of middle class teen pregnancy will bury this idea forever.
24
Maybe not forever, but at least for the next generation. We had pretty good, comprehensive sex ed in my public school in the south, back in the '70's, and yet, here we are.
On a purely rational level, I do see your point given the lessons of history, but oh, Andy, at what severe cost to these teens just to "learn a lesson" ? Shall we also go through another period of outlawing abortion (and now, from almost conception, an idea slowly gaining traction in in many states, beware!) -- just to see what we learn in that lesson also?
What is troubling about all this is real risk to real lives, and real consequences, not only for these women and those dads, but all society. Ignorance (and cruelty, in my opinion) all around this issue.
We do have much history to inform us of misguided direction and short-sighted decisions here. Yes, let's employ "common sense" learn from that, and go forward. I hear you.
Human Beings evolve very slowly. The desire for sex is a very powerful, natural instinct rooted in the purpose of procreation to keep every species vital. Throughout our 200,000 year history, Humans have found partners and procreated while in their mid teens. Today is no different. We have all acted upon an ancient, powerful instinct and desire to have sex with those we have been physically attracted to. Teenagers and young adults are acting upon this most basic of natural instincts. Abstinence is contrary to our instincts and nature. Education and access to birth control is most important to prevent unwanted pregnancies, disease and broken hearts. Living a life with values and morals are equally important to maintaining a healthy and happy relationships. We can and should have both.
120
This is about attempting to put women 'back into their place' as adoring and obedient wives, happy to be at home caring for the children, with thoughts of working outside the home only if absolutely necessary.
It is the ugly face of Trump and the 'pro life' people who see 'feminism' as a kind of disease, that those who march for women's equal rights are a menace and threat. For women who worship at this altar of righteousness, it is about promoting 'Christian values’, though what this has to do with the teachings of Christ completely escapes me.
It is about a fantasized perfect world of patriarchy of the 1950s, with many ideas hearkening back to decades long before that. Man as leader of the family, bread winner, with a subservient and docile mate, always there to do his bidding.
It is also about the double standard that what men do with 'some women' is just 'locker room talk'. But for women to have sexual desire, access to contraception, and abortion, are seen as true evils and dangerous threats in their preferred male dominated domain.
335
My folks got married in 1935, between the Depresson & WW2 their children came 8 years apart. If my Grandfather hadn’t been a doctor I think they would have been both closer & more numerous. Because the only true birth control was condoms. They were illegal to buy, even in pharmacies with a doctor’s prescription. But, doctors could ‘despense’ Them when absolutely necessary. He explained this to his daughter & soon to be son-in-law, privately in his office. Then said he would keep them supplied. By the time I got married, MARRIED men could by them by asking at the drug counter & proving they were married. But, young men are inventive, if they were in the service they were handed out freely. Don’t know what civilian single men did. A few years later they appeared on the shelves. At first in single & 3 packs & paying at the counter always was tough. Now you can buy 3 DOZEN in one box, different colors, & textures. At check out no one cares. But, young men need to KNOW ABOUT THEM, before they will buy them. They were at first where the shaving razors & cream were (men’s stuff). Now they are often in the section with the ‘feminine needs’. So, tell me, are women buying them now & tying the guys up to apply one? I can’t see any young man doing anything but run through the area with feminine needs, oh & usually adult diapers. Women’s most don’t carry men’s. It’s all human needs.
5
Exactly so. A few years ago, Sara Robinson wrote a cogent piece about this that is worth reading, 'Why Patriarchal Men Are Utterly Petrified of Birth Control and Why We'll Still Be Fighting About It 100 Years From Now'.
The link is https://www.alternet.org/story/154144/why_patriarchal_men_are_utterly_pe...
She has a wonderful line there that will ring true for many of us: 'The first rule of understanding apocalyptic movements is this: If someone tells you the world is ending, believe them. Because for them, it probably is.'
8
Trump and abstinence from sex in the same article? Hahahahahaha!
579
Trump is all about "do as I say, not as I do".
18
Trump is all about his own ego. These policies are quid pro quo for the support of the religious right. It's all transactional; if it doesn't affect him and his family, he doesn't care at all.
And the religious right doesn't care anything about real life and real people and real policy, I assume because one of the fundamentals is that this world is flawed and the next will be perfect.
Yet another reason for separation of church and state. VOTE.
Abstinence is something we can all use at one time or another in our lives. I did it for nine years in my forties, mostly because having sex with men I didn't care about wasn't appealing; I'd concluded a fulfilling relationship; and most of the men I came across didn't impress me.
I had plenty of sexual experience by that point in my life; I also had started teaching Sunday School kids and decided to try and be a role model for them in every way. It was instructive; it was edifying; I was not unhappy. But several years in, I started feeling bitter. I had started to view men as untrustworthy; sex as bad; and that feeling was one I couldn't tolerate. So I concluded my abstinence. I actually prayed about it. I asked God what to do about it, and the answer came back very clearly: have as much sex as possible, as long as no one gets hurt. Yes. God told me that.
Had I had abstinence imposed on my when I was young, I would have defied it. Instead, my mother gave me books on sex, which I read, and then I went to an all-women's school where I learned that "boys only want one thing" and I got myself a diaphragm from Planned Parenthood and had three great boyfriend who did not just want one thing. They wanted me.
You may be able to teach a man to fish, but you can't teach anyone not to have sex. That's something everyone needs to come to on their own — with the options laid out so they can make the choice that is healthy and safe for them, and so that no one gets hurt.
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"I asked God what to do about it, and the answer came back very clearly: have as much sex as possible, as long as no one gets hurt. Yes. God told me that."
I have not laughed that hard in a long, long, time.
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What did God's voice sound like? Male, I assume.
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Once again the evil trumpers will cause more female deaths, more fetal deaths, more pregnancies and more suffering.
To which god do they answer, is my only question.
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Grace: Easy question to answer. Their local wealthy pastor.
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Their God is Profit.
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The republican party is trying to make America great again just like it was in the 1950’s. The biggest problem is all the things they are turning to don’t work! They never have consistently worked. Programs like abstinence (Just Say No) and rhythm methods are just asking for unwanted, unplanned pregnancies producing more kids that people neither want nor can they afford. Maybe they will bring back the one stop light towns boarded up from coast to coast from the Great Republican Recession which we still are recovering from. That one thing should have doomed the republicans in 2016 except some Americans decided to give a snake oil producer the job as president. God help us all.
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We're the 50's really that great?
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"What do you call people who use the rhythm method?"
"Parents."
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No, the 50s were not that great, or the early 60s. All of the behaviors that are being ranted about now were happening then, but they were hidden. Hypocrisy ruled. Teen girls who were pregnant were sent off to 'homes' until they had given birth and their babies were put up for adoption or sent to orphanages that were often pretty awful, or forced to marry the father, thereby often wrecking three lives. Abortion was available if you had money. Extramarital affairs, with the opposite sex or the same were going on all of the time.
Rape and molestation were going on, just rarely prosecuted and punished.
Kids with disabilities or mental illness were 'put away' out of sight.
Of course we kids weren't supposed to know any of this, but we did.
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" As BuzzFeed News reported, administration officials who attended recent closed-door meetings at the United Nations were preoccupied with abstinence. Bethany Kozma, a senior adviser for gender equality and women’s empowerment at the United States Agency for International Development, called America a “pro-life nation,” stunning delegates from other countries."
Most people of the world probably have a hard time understanding what "abstinence-only" is supposed to have to do with "pro-life".
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Dear World,
Please know that Bethany Kozma's statement about American being a "pro-life nation" does not reflect the views of millions of pro-choice Americans. Statements like hers are an embarrassment to those of us fighting for women's right to choose.
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True, you’re not going to create much ‘life’ if you’re abstinent.
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In 1980, Taiwan's population totaled 18 million, not far from where it is today, 23.5 million. Meanwhile, the population of the Philippines has doubled, from 50 million to 100 million. The Philippines is strongly catholic. Filipinos are encouraged to develop abstinence-only relationships, and abortion is illegal. The result has been a disaster.
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That policy likely has been a success rather disaster when the collection basket is passed, which is the point of the whole exercise -- is it not? The poor may have ittle to put in, to get blessed and all, but even small donations from twice the number adds up. Those who profit from child labor also should be grateful, and perhaps express that gratitude in monetary ways.
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A disaster for the planet.
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In 1980, (incl Hong Kong) China’s population totaled 1.0 billion, not far from where it is today, 1.35 billion. Meanwhile, the population of India has almost doubled, from 700 million to 1.3 billion. China is strongly Buddhist, India is strongly Hindu. Indian women were encouraged to undergo sterilization. In China, having more than one child was illegal. The results have been all over the map – in both cases.
Meanwhile, in progressive utopia…
*ttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11414064/How-Europe-is-slowly-dying-despite-an-increasing-world-population.html
Here’s the fact-checking…
*ttps://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html
Though – times do change…
*ttps://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/world/asia/india-to-change-its-decades-old-reliance-on-female-sterilization.html
*ttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/world/asia/after-one-child-policy-outrage-at-chinas-offer-to-remove-iuds.html
Birth control is more complex than it looks…
Fortunately, sex isn’t…
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Wealthy families make sure that their know how to avoid stds and pregnancies by education, prophylactics, and abortion. But the religious right provides huge support for Republicans who oppose sex education, prophylactics and abortion, so they can assure a key constituency. We as a society pay dearly when disease is spread and immature people have children. The same people who oppose efforts, effective efforts, to reduce these problems also oppose using tax payers’ money to handle the consequences. Serving an ideal by causing preventable harm and misery should make far minded people decide to prevent harm. But these people consider the harm not being due to sticking to their doctrines but to God. God decides who lives well and who suffers, and people follow the rules of God as their religions decree them to be.
It’s pretty clear why freedom of conscience requires a separation of church and state.
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I’ll raise you on this. It’s pretty clear why any government system worth the support of the governed requires the separation of church & state. Let’s stop calling them hypocrites and call them what they are: traitors of the Constitution of the U.S. Thank goodness they are not smart enough to be stealthy about it!
Furthermore, they are not peddling disinformation. They are peddling, (at best) outmoded, ignorant, destructive, sexist opinions, and (at worst) bald faced intentional lies. I know this paper must uphold journalistic standards & use neutral language, but I don’t have to. Remind me again which deity’s modus operandi is obfuscation, confusion, and the pretense of benevolence?
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It is probably blasphemous when the right wing religious blame God for the very punishments they pretty much order God to mete out on people they disapprove of. People like women who have sex, whether consensual or coerced, and of course gays and the poor.
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Abstinence-only “sex education” is one of the more absurd ideas with which we’ve ever tinkered in America, and we’ve tinkered with a few. It’s so counter-reality that the last person I normally would expect to champion it would be Donald Trump, who, despite his excessively loud capacity to characterize his incandescent presence as the greatest gift to humanity the world has ever seen, nevertheless normally is brutally realistic about the motivations that drive human beings to do what they do.
Of course, he supports it because a political base that he needs very badly to remain loyal to him, communities of deep faith, support it. Should he be re-elected in 2020 (a distinct possibility), it will be interesting to see how fast he drops both abstinence-only sex education AND the hyper-religious like fourth-period French. His first four years necessarily must be about MAGA and helping to re-stabilize the dreadfully destabilized world he inherited, and that in turn must focus more on prosaic matters of well-paying jobs and a forward-leaning international approach; but his second four could well focus on a renascence of progressive social values in America. Wouldn’t THAT tick off hyper-libs to have their thunder so effectively stolen from them?
But, then, I supported Reagan strongly while believing that his en passant fascination with astrology and the occult generally was loony, to say the least. Trump at least has a practical political reason for supporting “just say no”.
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Not surprisingly except to my typical responders, I support the thrust of this editorial – I support the editorial view (manically liberal) perhaps one-third of the time. But you’re wasting your efforts, guys (and gals). So long as Trump needs the evangelicals and the hyper-religious generally, he will be supporting “just say no”. But it’s well-under three years that you need to harrumph and tolerate it – one way or the other.
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You forget that Trump is highly motivated by the adulation he receives from his loyal followers. One could say this is his only true motivation in politics. Ever the narcissist, Donald wants to be adored by his fans although he knows that being Enemy #1 to 60% of Americans is almost just as good. What better nourishment for a hyper narcissist than to know, for good or for ill, everybody has you foremost on their mind and on their lips? That’s why, for Trump, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Therefore, he will continue to follow the social policies that he has championed so far. Believing Trump will mellow and become rational during his second term has as much logic to it as believing Trump would somehow become presidential after his inauguration following a campaign of bizarre and over the top behaviour. Ain’t gonna happen.
So for God (and America’s) sake do not vote to re-elect Trump believing that he will be more presidential during his second term. That’s the definition of insanity.
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Peter:
Your view of Trump is two-dimensional. Like almost all of us, he realizes that there is no part of us that doesn't, eventually, die. To project the fleeting fact of our existence into a future that otherwise couldn't care less, one needs to make a dent or two in reality and that future. THIS eternal urge is primarily what has motivated all those whose names we remember since the dawn of human civilization.
Does temporal adulation flog a persistent and intense narcissism in Trump? Sure. But it's not what fundamentally motivated him to reach for and win the presidency. However, I'm sure he wouldn't want to be remembered for what he DOESN'T believe. Given the opportunity, I'm sure that he'll endeavor to be remembered for what he DOES believe.
Promoting abstinence is a moral solution to the medical problems of STIs and teen pregnancy. Unfortunately, other moral solutions to real life problems such as murder haven’t really panned out so well, even when backed up with lengthy prison sentences and the death penalty.
Contraception is actually an effective solution for STI prevention (using barrier methods), pregnancy prevention and, most importantly, for abortion prevention. They are especially effective when coupled with information about how our bodies work and work together.
Sadly, as with climate change, pollution, and crime knowing about successful solutions doesn’t matter one whit to the 21st century Know-Nothing’s who’ve taken over policy. Hopefully 2020 comes soon enough to get the world back on track.
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You are correct. It has always been said that we can't legislate morality. On your other note, sadly, it actually seems it is the self proclaimed "Know-Everything's" that have taken over policy.
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Peter, whose morality are you thinking of? The right-wing "Christians" that Jesus wouldn't recognize? The sects of other religions, like Judaism and Islam, that want to keep women dependent and pregnant?
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“Unfortunately, other moral solutions to real life problems such as murder... “ - you mean murder isn’t a solution to real life.
Abstinence-based sex education and abstinence-based gun education/laws. When will people learn that banning and/or prohibiting things does more harm than good?
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What abstinence-based gun anything? You're referring to a foreign country.
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Abstinence-based gun education? “Well-regulated “ is the key phrase in the 2nd Amendment. Let’s not abstain from common sense.
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Maybe he's thinking about the threat of a shotgun wedding as being conducive to abstinence?
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