The news from the reproductive health front is not good these days for preborn children, but it is for those who cash in on the sexually transmitted disease, sterility and unplanned pregnancy market. Those who profit from ignorance and pain appear to be having a very good economic surge and are campaigning hard for even more money.
To increase the use of intrauterine devices, for example, a recent survey was conducted. A study of 144 adolescent and young women from Pittsburgh found that more than 60 percent of the study's participants initially had never heard of the IUD. The article states,
Researchers noted that more than half of all the participants had positive attitudes toward the IUD after the three-minute oral educational intervention and that women who had ever had voluntary sexual intercourse were significantly more likely to have a positive attitude toward the IUD. The researchers concluded that all sexually active women should be educated about IUD use in part because health care providers cannot predict who will be interested in IUDs based on reproductive history or demographic information.
So we can safely presume that naïve young women who are sexually active will be receiving more information about the IUD. They will be hearing a great deal about this device, which happens to be the most effective abortifacient device so far in the birth control repertoire. However, they will not be given all the facts. A three-minute hard sell does not allow for telling the truth.
In another report from the August 2008 issue of the Journal of Healthcare for the Poor and Underserved , it is reported that,
nearly seven million U.S. women rely on family planning services funded by the federal Title X program, Medicaid, and states and localities. The services have numerous health, personal and financial benefits — including better birth spacing and greater opportunity to reach educational and career goals for individuals, and cost savings to both individuals and society as a result of fewer unplanned births.
Reading between the lines, we can ascertain the true objective of publicly funded birth control programs, which have now been in existence for over 38 years. The goal is to eliminate preborn children from the families of those below the poverty level who are deemed to be unable to accept an "unplanned birth." Notice that the term "unplanned pregnancy" is not used, because abortion helps the expectant mother avoid the "unplanned birth."
Of course, the healthiest way to address this matter, if indeed it is a problem, would be to promote abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage. But if the government were to follow that course, organizations such as Planned Parenthood might see their funding dry up, and the government simply could not bear the thought.
In case nobody has told you lately, those organizations that market birth control rake in millions of your tax dollars . . . $336 million last year, to be precise, and that number represents only the federal tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood!
Jennifer Frost of the Guttmacher Institute, a Planned Parenthood research arm, reports in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health,
I examined the 1995 and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth for patterns and trends in the use of sexual and reproductive health care services by US women according to type of provider. The percentage of women reporting receipt of contraceptive services rose between 1995 and 2002 (from 36% to 41%), and the level and mix of services received varied considerably according to type of provider. Women visiting publicly funded providers received a broader mix of services than did clients of private providers.
According to a report on this study, Frost recommended that her research be used to help policymakers and taxpayer-funded program planners improve delivery and increase financing for such services.
Please note that this is yet another example of how effectively our tax dollars are being used to entice women into using birth control, which of course means that abortion absolutely must be available as a backup, since no method of birth control works all the time! Further, studies like this build the case for increasing the tax burden on you and I so that more and more clients can be created for the birth control market.
More customers equal more money.
Finally, to underscore their insatiable appetite for money, customers and souls, these purveyors of lurid behavior modification claim that sex education needs to be "medically accurate." Now, in case you have no clue what that means, I am most happy to explain it to you.
The Monthly Women's Health Research Review, from which I gleaned the material for this commentary, reports on a recent article by John Santelli, of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The report states,
Although many states have implemented "seemingly uncontroversial" requirements for scientific or medical accuracy in sex education and HIV prevention programs, these requirements "respond to the increasing injection of ideology into sexuality education, as represented by abstinence-only programs." …According to Santelli, science is "being manipulated and ignored" in debates concerning public policy, which has [led] to abstinence-only curricula that contain scientifically inaccurate information or withhold vital information from students.
Here is the crux of the problem. When you have a federal government steeped in promoting the idea that birth control needs to be provided, along with "education" and how-to courses, the result is an ongoing effort to remove all references to virtue from such programs. The "medical accuracy" to which Santelli refers to means that information is very selectively presented to young people. While an adolescent may be told that he or she needs to have ready access to birth control in order to have "safe sex," that same young person will not be told that sexual promiscuity can result in agonizingly painful emotional and physical consequences that can last a lifetime.
Registered nurse Nancy Valko sums up this grim situation very well:
"Comprehensive" sex education is not really about giving information but rather about a politics of despair where the sex "experts" hope for some damage control in the areas of teen pregnancy and disease. But we are already seeing the failure of such an approach in the proliferation of new sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, divorce, unwed moms, deadbeat dads, child abuse, etc., as well as a growing cynicism about relationships in our young people. If sex is seen as little more than recreation with consequences to be avoided, how will our children later be able to handle the temptation to cheat on a spouse or the sacrifices involved in raising a child?
Yet, as the above makes very clear, it is not in the best interest of the birth control merchants to have such facts get out! After all, more virtue means less money in the cash register.
Yet, the truth is there for one and all to see, if only they have eyes to see and a desire to save our youth. A 2000 Massachusetts News article reported that, according to psychiatrist Melvin Anchell,
sex education is "anti-educational." He says that if a young child receives sex education between the ages of 6 and 12, his "curiosity" and his "desire to learn are destroyed." The doctor says, "With the artificially induced arousal of his erotogenic zones, the child experiences a decreased capability for academic pursuits and exhibits an emotional retardation in connection with the development of compassionate feelings."
There is nothing wholesome about any aspect of the birth control merchants and their wares. So I ask you, why are we paying for it? Until we demand an end to the birth control merchants' hawking of lasciviousness, we are literally underwriting a decadent future.
Speak up!