Then it's no longer abstinence, is it?
If a condom fails, it's still a condom. If a human life was aborted in the womb, it still was a human life. But if someone fails to abstain, they are no longer abstinent.
This having to explain the same thing over and over again is beginning to wear a little thin. Fine, I'll dumb it down, and restate without any nuance whatsoever:
I never meant that abstinence itself does not work. I of course meant that the human application of abstinence was prone to failure, because of our imperfect and human natures. I naively expected Freepers to be able to discern that particular nuance.
Of course abstinance works 100% of the time in a vacuum when you define abstinence in a purely clinical fashion. Those who aren't having sex never get pregnant or contract STD's. However, the unfortunate truth is that mere mortals have moments of weakness, and even those who are committed to abstinence sometimes fail. That's a fact of life. Only one man without sin has walked this earth.
In the end, it doesn't matter how you parse it. It doesn't matter if you say abstinence is imperfect or if you say that humans fail at being abstinent. At the end of the day, the result is exactly the same: You'll have a number of young people who were committed to waiting until marriage, and failing in a moment of weakness.