Sexual abstinence speakers canceled (by NJ Teacher Union)

TRENTON - The state teachers' union has canceled three sex education workshops scheduled for its annual conference after learning that the presenters favor the teaching of abstinence in schools.

Karen Joseph, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Education Association, said the decision was made because those beliefs conflict with the union's policy against abstinence-only sex education. The scheduled presenters were an educator and two doctors.

"When we realized their views were contrary to our policy, we felt we had to uninvite them," Joseph said. The three-day conference will be held Nov. 7-9 in Atlantic City.

The canceled sessions will be replaced by two workshops led by staff members of the Network for Family Life Education at Rutgers University. The group trains teachers in comprehensive sex education, which includes information on abstinence and contraception.

Bernadette Vissani, the director of the New Jersey Coalition for Abstinence Education, who was scheduled to lead one of the canceled workshops, said the decision was nothing more than censorship. She urged union members to protest the leadership's change in plans.

While Vissani said she and the other speakers personally believe in abstinence until marriage, she said the workshops would have presented tips for remaining abstinent as well as explaining the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases.

"We are considered experts in the field of abstinence education, and I think we have something to say," she said.

The other speakers would have been Joanna Mohn, a Lebanon internist and member of the New Jersey Physicians Resource Council, and James Thompson of Montclair, a retired physician and a member of the New Jersey Advisory Council on Adolescent Pregnancy.

New Jersey lawmakers approved a law last year that requires teachers to stress that abstinence from sexual activity is the only completely reliable means of avoiding pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, or other sexually transmitted diseases. It also mandates that any mention of contraception must include failure rates.

It seems Evil has penetrated the very people who are with our children for 7 hours a day!! They canceled workshops which favored abstinence and will put in presentors who will teach how to put condoms on a bananas, they basically teach that everything is OK so long as both partners are consenting, they fail to point out that one partner can be 14 and the other 30.

"Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion clinic chain, is currently being investigated for allegedly aiding
and abetting the sexual predators of minors.

The current investigations began after evidence surfaced indicating Planned Parenthood may have failed to report sexual abuse of children by adults to proper authorities, while offering abortions to children."

Isn't that nice.

Let's see how many teachers boycott this lecture and the convention, it will their true character. This same union takes mony from its members (thinking every member is a democrat) and uses the money illegally to give to democrat candidates.

They are now teaching children in 7th grade how to put a condom on a banana and to accept same-sex marriages and that lifestyle. It's disgusting.

____________________________________________________________

CDC Director Says Abstinence Education Works

During Saturday, August 24th's broadcast of CNN's Capitol Gang, Bill Hunt asked Julie Geberding, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about the merits of abstinence education.

HUNT: The question of preventing teen pregnancy, conservatives want to limit this to sexual abstinence-only efforts. In research you've seen, is there any evidence that abstinence-only programs are effective, or the most
effective in preventing teen pregnancy?

GERBERDING: I think we do have evidence that abstinence-only can contribute to prevention of HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy. The question is, how do we integrate the message of abstinence into the lifestyles and circumstances that our whole spectrum of population experience?

CNN
Capitol Gang
August 24, 2002
________________________________________________________________________

Abortion May Increase Women's Mortality Rate Says New Study

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois, Aug 29, 02 (LSN.ca/CWNews.com) - A study published in the latest issue of the Southern Medical Journal reveals that women who have abortions are at significantly higher risk of death than women who give birth. This finding contradicts the widely accepted opinion that abortion is safer than childbirth but it is not a surprise to pro-life leaders.

Researchers examined death records linked to Medi-Cal ( payments for births and abortions for approximately 173,000 low-income Californian women. They discovered that women who had abortions were almost twice as likely to die in the following two years and that the elevated mortality rate of aborting women persisted over at least eight years.

During the eight-year period studied, women who aborted had a 154 percent higher risk of death from suicide, an 82 percent higher risk of death from accidents, and a 44 percent higher risk of death from natural causes.

This is the second major record-based study to link abortion to elevated mortality rates. In 1997, a study of women in Finland sent a tremor of worry through family planning agencies when it revealed that in the first year following an abortion, aborting women were 252 percent more likely to die compared to women who delivered and 76 percent more likely to die compared to women who had not been pregnant.

This new study confirms the trend found in Finland. It is also the first American study to use a uniform and objective standard for associating deaths with prior abortions and births.

Critics of abortion have long complained about the inaccuracies of abortion mortality figures. There are no federal or state regulations requiring the reporting of abortion complications. Indeed, the international standard for identifying cause of death does not even provide a means for identifying surgical abortion as a cause of death.

Another recently published Elliot Institute study using the California data reveals that aborting women are also more likely to seek subsequent mental health care. A third Elliot Institute study, published last January in the British Medical Journal, reveals that subsequent long-term clinical depression is more common among those women who have had abortions. Depression can weaken the immune system and reduce overall health.

The Elliot Institute: (www.afterabortion.org)
Sept. 1, 2002, 9:46PM
________________________________________________________________________

Teens saying no to sex for the health of it

Abstinence classes ignore morality,focus on hazards
By TODD ACKERMAN

Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Medical Writer

Lou Mandy Allison remembers the cynicism with which she and her friends approached an abstinence-education course in middle school two years ago.

They were already nervous and uncomfortable about the subject and were at the age at which their parents' admonitions "went in one ear and out the other." Figuring they'd just get preached at that teen sex was morally wrong, they acted like it was stupid.

"Instead, it turned out to be an incredible eye-opener," said Allison, now a 15-year-old sophomore at Rogers High School in Central Texas. "We had no idea sex could have so many negative health consequences. Those considerations are a lot harder to blow off than moral ones."

After years of taking its cues from religion, the abstinence movement has a new source: medicine. A wave of new programs around the country are telling young people that, from a medical standpoint, there's no such thing as safe sex for a teenager. Without any talk of religion or values, the programs document genuine health reasons -- many of them not exactly common knowledge -- why sex should be an adult activity.

One of the hottest programs is the one taken by Allison. The program is now in middle schools in 31 Texas school districts and is poised to become part of high school curricula. Called "Worth the Wait," the program was created by Dr. Patricia Sulak, an obstetrician-gynecologist, noted Texas A&M University contraception researcher and convert to the abstinence-only movement.

Teachers, parents and even doctors typically flunk a 10-question quiz based on the curriculum.

Among the information taught in these programs:

· There are 25 significant sexually transmitted diseases today, up from two in 1960.

· The cervix of a girl is more vulnerable to certain sexually transmitted diseases than the cervix of an adult woman.

· Sex early in life can increase a woman's cancer risk because it increases the eventual likelihood of multiple partners, putting her more at risk for human papilloma virus, or HPV, which causes 97 percent of all cervical cancers.

· There's no evidence that condoms reduce the risk of STDs other than HIV/AIDS (and only 85% effective for HIV/AIDS).

But the health-focused abstinence movement, the result of a five-year flow of abstinence-only federal funding that President Bush is asking Congress to boost by $33 million more a year, is just as controversial as the religion-based one. Most programs still don't talk about homosexuality, masturbation or abortion, or offer instruction about condoms or birth control, instead telling students they should discuss it with a health-care professional once they become sexually active.

Sulak says promoting abstinence while teaching about contraception sends a mixed message, one likely to result in the abstinence message being ignored. Critics at Planned Parenthood and other such places have little patience for such arguments.

"That idea there's a danger to talking about both abstinence and contraception isn't born out by statistics," said Heather Boonstra, a senior public policy associate for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood's research arm. "The point is that young people need the total spectrum of information for when they do become sexually active."

Boonstra and other critics of abstinence-only programs cite a 2001 study published in the American Journal of Sociology that found students who took a virginity pledge promising to abstain from sex until marriage were less likely to become sexually active than students who didn't take such a pledge, but were one-third less likely to use contraception when they became sexually active (an average of 18 months later).

The study also found the pledge worked best among 15- to 17-year-olds, with no effect among older teenagers, and that it became less effective as more students pledged.
Still, since abstinence-only education began in schools in the early 1990s, teenage sex is down (more than half of high school students are virgins, up from about 40 percent a decade ago). Teen pregnancy rates, birth rates and abortion rates have declined significantly, and studies show that increased abstinence among girls was a factor, accounting for a quarter to half of the decline between 1988 and 1995.

The rest of the decline was attributed to better contraception by sexually active teens, particularly the use of Depo-Provera, which requires only an injection every three months.

Whether the change was because of abstinence-only programs and whether the new health-focused programs are more effective than the old religion-based ones is unknown. Observers hope that a major evaluation of the programs by a research organization in Princeton, N.J., called Mathematica provides some of those answers. It is due to be completed in 2003.

Regardless, there already are more than 700 abstinence-education programs. According to a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 2 percent of secondary school teachers said abstinence was the sole sex-education approach in their schools in 1988, but by 1999 that number had increased to 23 percent. The turning point was in 1996, when President Clinton signed a bill, Title V, providing funds for another approach for family planning besides contraceptive services.

Texas law requires that schools teaching sexual education devote more attention to abstinence than any other behavior, present it as the preferred choice of behavior for unmarried people of school age, and emphasize that it is the only 100-percent-effective method of preventing pregnancy, STDs and the emotional trauma associated with adolescent sexual activity. Schools may not distribute condoms, but they are free to offer information about contraception, as is the case in the Houston Independent School District.

"We offer information, mostly about the reliability rating of different condom brands," said Rose Haggerty, HISD's manager for health and physical education. "It's a hard topic to avoid, given the questions students ask. But our focus is clearly abstinence. We tell students they shouldn't be putting themselves in adult situations, they shouldn't be putting themselves at risk of unhealthy, age-inappropriate behavior."

Programs receiving Title V funds must adhere to an eight-point definition of abstinence-only education, such as "a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of sexual activity." Every state but California took the funding.
The abstinence movement's improved credibility is evident in the number of programs promoting birth control that advertise themselves as "abstinence plus." These programs, which once dismissed abstinence, are now touting that they provide comprehensive sex education and abstinence promotion as well as contraceptive advice.

Some criticism of the health-focused abstinence movement is coming from old-line abstinence supporters who are unhappy that the new programs ignore a moral element.

Critics say the pendulum is swinging too far the other way. They note that since Bush became president, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web page that touted comprehensive sex education, "Programs That Work," has been removed. They remain convinced that comprehensive sex-education programs are more effective than abstinence-only programs, even the new health-focused ones. Noting that institutions receiving Title V funding are required to leave religion out of their messages, they claim that the abstinence movement may have put on a medical face but can't hide its church-based soul.

Sulak is quick to scoff at such suggestions. A pioneer in the study of period suppression, the notion that the birth control pill can be taken for long periods of time to decrease unwanted effects associated with menstruation, Sulak had wanted nothing to do with the teen sex-education debate. She figured that "bag of worms" was the last thing she needed in her life.

But when her sixth-grade son's principal asked for her help creating a sex-ed program, Sulak couldn't say no. She started researching adolescent sexuality issues and existing sex-ed curricula, and marveled at the latter's inaccuracies: how you can die from STDs or how, if you just use a condom, you having nothing to worry about. She also marveled at how much she learned and how many doctors today still are ignorant about the issue.

Seven years later, she marvels at how well her message is being received, particularly by students.

"Before I got involved in this, I didn't do anything to prevent disease, I just accepted that kids will have sex," said Sulak, 50. "But I no longer think that's necessarily true. I think that's just the way those of us who grew up during the sexual revolution tend to think. We don't give kids enough credit. As I keep seeing, if we make them aware of the risks, they'll make good decisions."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.