Thanks to Journal of Adolescent Health

John Santelli and company finally put in print what is really at the core of the entire sex education debate. The gist of the argument is finally " out of the closet"!!!!! In a very anti-health position paper printed in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Dr. Santelli et.al. maintain that abstinence education is "scientifically and ethically problematic". Why? Because teaching children to abstain from sex until marriage is "inconsistent with commonly accepted notions of human rights". There it is--children cannot be taught to abstain from sex because it is their right to have sex. Damn the frivolous notions of teen pregnancy, STDs, AIDS, sexual coercion or abuse. Lets just make sure that the right to have sex is preserved without any limitation. That sure is worth the sacrifice of a few generations worldwide. I'm ready to give my children over to that lofty goal, aren't you?

Wake up America! It is scientifically and ethically okay to teach children not to use drugs, not to smoke, to eat healthy, to exercise, and to not drink or drive until a certain age but they cannot be told to protect themselves by not having sex until married despite the almost certainty that they will suffer a health consequence if they begin sexual activity as children. Where is the logic? That's right--logic comes in the form of a condom, a contraceptive or a vaccine. It surely is not the fault of any of these guardians of human rights that one in three sexually active girls gets pregnant and one in two get a disease. They taught children how to "have their cake and eat it too."--responsibility done.

The additional danger is, once we all accept the belief that sexual activity has no limits, no context, no connection with love, then the abuse that is already occuring, yet under-reported, in our communities flourishes. The issue becomes something other than the sexual behavior. Rape on campus is not a sexual assault, it is an alcoholic romp. A pregnant twelve year old just forgot her contraceptive or didn't discuss condom use with her 20-something "partner". Young newlyweds divorce in six months wondering how the sex could be so good before but the marriage be so bad.

So thanks to the Journal of Adolescent Health for showing its true colors. This is a magazine that has a very ideological bent to its medical opinions. Don't be so naive to think this is not affecting the great state of Wisconsin. The exact same argument was voiced by a Planned Parenthood representative at a public hearing last fall in testimony opposing the educational objective of abstinence as the expected behavior for school age children in the state. Although only nine state senators sided with that opinion, in the halls of the Department of Public Instruction and the Department of Health and Family Services the exact same mentality is clothed in phraseolgy of "best choice", "respect for family values", and"parent-child connectedness". In actuality, these departments are trying to make schools and reproductive healthcare non-judgmental, value-free zones. From their Madison perch, the poobahs see no connection between their policies and the destruction occuring in the lives of our young people. Don't be fooled by the rhetoric that will continue to doom the undereducated, the poor, the at-risk and the children of broken homes to severe health and well-being consequences of sexual behavior that is publicly being condoned by not condemning it.