culturevulture

            Barack Obama may have declared the pregnancy of Bristol Palin a subject that is ‘off limits’ to his campaign for presidency, but I really have to hope, even maybe delude myself into honestly believing, that if he becomes president the disease that Bristol’s pregnancy is a symptom of will not be outside the limit of his political scope. This disease I speak of is abstinence education and the anti-abortion leanings of the political right. How can one not laugh (or scream, or cry) at the perfect symmetry whereby an abstinence-touting 44 year old woman becomes the grandmother of a 17 year old’s bastard child. We have to suppose that Palin desires this fate for all young women, after all, what other rationale could rectify the situation?

            We all know abstinence education doesn’t work, or at least we know if we care to educate ourselves on this wasteful, useless- no, make that counter productive- policy. Only a Creationist could deny human biology to the point that they think telling kids not to have sex is a viable method of keeping them from doing it. Our only reason for existing, from an evolutionary perspective, is to reproduce. Eating, sleeping, having friends, a job, money, a house, these are all just means to an end. And in an increasingly secular society, where the threat of Hell fades into the background, abstinence education becomes even more obsolete, even more wasteful, and even less relevant. Even within the Christian sphere, however, those who push for abstinence education for religious reasons should realize something isn’t working when even the threat of eternal damnation can’t keep kids out of each other’s pants. Abstinence education just guarantees that they will do it with the girl on top so she can’t get knocked up. That’s how things work in the uneducated world.

            It would seem that even those most dedicated to abstinence, the so-called success stories of the abstinence education program, lapse more quickly than those who aren’t so dedicated. I am referring to those Christian teenagers who take vows of abstinence in church, sometimes given a little ring signifying their marriage to Jesus before their marriage on Earth, who sign documents and give oaths to their decision. As an avid listener to Dan Savage’s podcast, ‘The Savage Lovecast,’ I found myself laughing grotesquely when I heard that the majority of these vow takers had sex within the one year period following their vow (he was referencing a 2006 Harvard report by Janet Rosenbaum). Mr. Savage joked that, thus, the best way to ensure one would get laid was to have his or her partner take a vow of chastity. That’s what abstinence education and its results are: a joke. And the joke gets even more disturbingly laughable when further evidence of the effects of these pledges is taken into account. These kids making vows are far less vigilant about condom use when they do have sex than those who do not take the vow (per 2005 study published in The Journal of Adolescent Health). While these pledgers do have a similar rate of STD infection, they are less likely to be tested- that is, to be responsible members of our grand sexual community. Keep in mind the pledgers have similar rates of STD infection although they are often not having ‘sex,’ instead opting to involve themselves in those tricky, Christian only ‘everything but’ relationships, where vaginal penetration is the only thing off the menu, but condoms are still only involved less than half the time.

             I would simply feel foolish and roll my eyes at living in a country promoting such ridiculous nonsense if this useless program were kept to the borders of our country, but I am irate knowing that my tax dollars go to implementing this same feckless program in AIDS-stricken African countries. In a world where Chinese-finger-trap-with-teeth-style penis catchers are in use to combat truly catastrophic levels of rape, the GOP has pushed forward more than a hundred million dollars to teach abstinence to these youths, as if by knowing to tell their rapist the horrible, ravaging effects of syphilis or untreated gonorrhea these young African girls can talk him out of savagely violating them. This is a disgrace, and we should certainly be ashamed of our country and our government, when, instead of putting this money into AIDS treatment, we belittle these people and their epidemics (both rape and disease) by funding a program whereby they really only learn the grisly truths of their own futures.

            As if my sanity and faith in my nation has not been rattled enough, the abstinence education program is part of a one-two punch by the GOP, going hand in hand with revoking abortion rights. The only problem I have with the abortion situation as it stands, at least in my state of California, is that they are in general too expensive, ensuring that poverty stays as cyclical as it has ever been. I could be truly cynical and say that the problem with abortion is that the babies that get aborted- those of women responsible enough to seek out an abortion- would be more fit for this world than those born to those who can’t provide a good life for a child but who are too irresponsible to do what is good for the world and get rid of it- but I won’t go that far. However, I will say that I am certainly a believer of the hypothesis on the correlation between abortion and crime rates stated in Freakonomics. Here it is posited that the great drop in crime rates which occurred at the tail end of the 20^th century- which cannot be accounted for by traditional superficial partisan cause-and-effect- can be attributed to the legalization of abortion about 18 years prior. The argument is that quite a few unwanted, uncared for babies- babies that would have been born before Roe v. Wade- now did not roam the earth to victimize its inhabitants. I would argue, to further the grotesque irony of it all, that the only way the GOP could make significant progress in its war on drugs would be to endorse many, many abortions.

            The more I read about climate change the more this alarming sounding proposition- that we should encourage fewer births no matter how this decline would be brought about- makes sense. Only a government that still tries to deny the reality of climate change could propose any programs whereby there are more people on earth. Our birthrate is one of the highest in the Western World, ranking just under procreation-happy Ireland and Iceland. While our birth rate statistic keeps company with many an impoverished African and Asian nation, we also have a much lower death rate than most nations. I know most nations bemoan their low birth rates, but consider our current precipitous situation. We are told that the reason gas prices have flown sky high is that there are so many people in India and China who now need this oil. The smart among us are concerned with new phenomena we wouldn’t have understood a decade ago, like our carbon footprints or hybrid cars. Why in the world would we want more people, more carbon footprints, more gas hungry mouths to feed.

            So I know that the GOP does not concern itself so much with the damage we are doing to our planet, so why else would we want to curb our birthrates? Let’s speak their language: for money’s sake. Social security is already in shambles, and no one knows how to fix it. More people coming into the world, namely the American world, means more stress on an already failing system. And, with the GOP’s denial of stem cell research they are guaranteeing that those who grow old, poor as they will be without social security, thus depending on programs like Medicare, will be riddled with cancer and Alzheimer’s, diseases that last tens of years, racking up huge hospital and medication bills. Less babies (i.e. more abortions, more readily available, cheap, effective birth control and a knowledge of how to use it) means less strain on the economy, if not the planet. An SUSPS survey reports that 12 percent of children born in America are unwanted. Not just unplanned- and anyone can slip up, whether the girl is always on top or not- but unwanted pregnancies carried to term to ensure we manage to screw up our planet, our country, our finances and our bodies. Why in the world would we encourage that more unwanted babies be born?

            I don’t know how hopeful to be for the new election, because clearly it’s largely the ignorance of the American populace and not just the Bush administration or the GOP that drives this absolutely ridiculous set of values, flying in the face of science, statistics, and even paradoxically its own goals. In the meantime, I promise not to have any babies I don’t plan, and I will be sure to teach them the much broader implications of sex and reproduction. These implications should be what is taught in school, a way to make kids feel more responsible for their lust than the simple ‘do as I say’ method of abstinence education.

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