Spring Break
Where the rubbers meet the road
Abstract:
In my experience, defenders of abortion, contraception and Planned Parenthood have one main thing in common: they obfuscate and try to cloud the argument.
Sara Gwin's response to my last column was predictably filled with enough rhetorical straw men and red herrings to be the journalistic equivalent of the Scarecrow falling into a giant vat of Swedish Fish....
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Vanessa
posted 8/26/08 @ 7:54 PM PST
I found your long quote from Dr. Mulcaire-Jones, which seems to have been cut and pasted directly from an article authored by the The Catholic Education Resource center.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0079.html
I spent a little more time trying to find information on Mulcaire-Jones, who it turns out is the director of Maternal Life International, a non-profit that promotes abstinence and faithfulness in marriage to combat AIDS primarily in Africa. However, I couldn't find any basis for the claim that in cases where "the condoms are worn properly and are in perfect condition - condoms fail one in 10 times." You suggest that he might be citing a UN study for this statistic. I found the study, but the conclusion is completely different:
"The conclusions do not mean that every tenth condom is defective, but rather that something has gone wrong in about 10 percent of their use. In many cases, specialists said, human error is the source of the failure, resulting in condoms slipping off, breaking, or not being put on early enough. The report also said that the failure rate to protect against HIV was probably the same in preventing pregnancies."
http://www.thebody.com/content/art28493.html
I'd also like to note that there are plenty of researchers working in Uganda to combat the AIDS epidemic who don't see promoting condom use as foolish.
There is hardly agreement over the cause of declining HIV prevalence in Uganda. In fact, one longitudinal study conducted from 1994-2003 concluded that the drop in HIV in Uganda was linked to condom use and death. The data isn't conclusive as to what specifically
worked in Uganda and researchers are still debating over how to reach agreement based on the evidence.
http://www.retroconference.org/2005/CD/Abstracts/25775.htm
http://www.atypon-link.com/doi/abs/10.1521/aeap.2008.20.3.275
I could go on, but all-in-all, I feel like I've already spent more time researching my comments than you did for the whole of your article.
I've read a number of your columns in the Liberty as well as in the Barometer. You claim your opinions are well thought-out and based on facts, but in reality it seems you rely on the opinions of others, rather than evidence, to form your views. You relate their opinions, as well as your own, to readers as "truth", but it seems that you haven't given much thought at all as to how one determines what the truth (about anything) is.