Where the rubbers meet the road

By: Dan Fitzpatrick

Posted: 8/13/08

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.

And Gwin would also have you believe that, like the Scarecrow with a brain, Planned Parenthood can "unravel any riddle - for any individdle - in trouble or in pain."

But the truth is that at the very least, Planned Parenthood is selling people sexual responsibility they could easily exercise for free. But at worst, it has resulted in the deaths of millions of unborn children.

In regard to sexual responsibility, Gwin once again asserts something I've addressed before - that she and her compatriots act as though sexuality is completely uncontrollable on the front end (no pun intended), citing "raging hormones" and confusion caused by society and "abstinence-only-until-marriage education."

Let's take a look at if this really is true: is it really not possible for young people to control their sexuality, and does it cause harm to teach them abstinence?

Perhaps the most astounding evidence that Gwin is flat wrong comes from Uganda, where the AIDS epidemic has hit the young population hard.

Following the institution of abstinence and Natural Family Planning programs, HIV transmission rates dropped from about 18 percent to about 6 percent, according to the Population Researcher Institute's Joseph D'Agostino.

Those combating the AIDS epidemic also have recognized the foolishness in promoting condom use, like Dr. George Mulcaire-Jones.

"In Uganda, where there has been an intensive AIDS prevention program centered on abstinence, HIV among 15-to-19-year-olds has dropped from 25 percent of the population in that age group to 9 percent," Mulcaire-Jones said.

"During the same period in neighboring Kenya, Malawi and Zambia - where AIDS prevention involved condom distribution and no change in sexual behavior patterns - there has been no drop in new infections. Why? Because in ideal, perfect conditions - in which the condoms are worn properly and are in perfect condition - condoms fail one in 10 times. So in perfect conditions it's not much of a guarantee, and they're seldom used in perfect conditions. Meanwhile, they send a message that sexual behavior patterns should continue on as they always have."

Ten percent failure rate for condoms? Where did that number come from? We so often hear the line that Gwin echoed, "most birth control is over 99 percent effective when used correctly" (although that "when used correctly" part has apparently been pretty tricky for people).

In 2003, it was a study done by those anti-condom zealots at the United Nations who found that condoms were failing up to a 10th of the time.

Suppose that only a million condoms are shipped to Africa (though the real number is much higher) - that's nearly 100,000 failures. This is not the way to stop an infection.

It's the experience of Uganda, where the rubber - err, abstinence - meets the road, that demolishes the "safe sex" mantra Gwin and Planned Parenthood are hawking.

Of course, if you want more evidence, there's always the study that indicated those who use the Depo-Provera shot can triple their susceptibility to certain STIs, as well as the plain fact that the Human Papillomavirus (the most common STI, which can cause warts and cervical cancer) is spread by skin-to-skin contact between the abdomen and mid-thigh.

Forget condoms; the only ways to completely prevent HPV infections are either abstinence or hip-waders.

But Gwin is content to ignore these facts and try to argue by name-calling, labeling me an "anti-choice zealot." She also claims advocates of sexual responsibility call people like her "baby-eaters," which of course I never said, but you might think so after reading her article.

You might also think after reading it that I shamelessly lied and claimed Planned Parenthood is filled with belligerent racists (which, again, I never did).

My point was that regardless of the reasons she or Planned Parenthood comes up with for why they perform so many abortions of Black babies, it doesn't change how many Black children are killed in their clinics.

One commenter on my column tried to use Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics to show that White women have the most abortions.

This is true, naturally, because Whites are the majority of the population. The truly relevant figure is that in 2003, despite being about 17 percent of the national population, Blacks made up 37 percent of abortions. That translates to about 314,668 Black children having their lives ended early.

Numbers like that are sometimes too abstract for me to understand, so here's a helpful comparison: the number of Black abortions in 2003 was roughly equivalent to the population of the city of Pittsburgh.

The numbers and facts are out there for anybody to find, and that's why Gwin and Planned Parenthood continue to close ranks and run interference for each other. It's why they categorize abortion as a "woman's right to choose" while neglecting to say that they are "choosing" whether or not to end a baby's life - it just doesn't sound as nice when you put it that way.

It's why they simply presume that people can't take responsibility for their actions, and so they need contraception and abortion to protect them from the effects of their dangerous behavior.

Fortunately, our president, the Roman Catholic Church and our African brethren all know the truth. They know that only by encouraging young people like us to take control of ourselves - our sexuality, our behavior, our values - and resist the absurd "consequence-free sex" crud we've been force-fed at OSU and elsewhere.

Gwin and Planned Parenthood treat sex like a buffet, where you can have all your body can possibly handle and the consequences are about as bad as a stomach ache. Most of us students already know - many from personal experience - that that's all a bunch of shinola.

Frankly, I think it's past time we let them know we're not going to be led around by the crotch, and that we are far more capable of being responsible with our lives and bodies than they can even imagine.

We're not going to be left singing along with the Scarecrow, "if I only had a brain…"