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8/27/2008
Maybe the Greatest Ringtone Ever?
By David Castillo
One of the most awesome ringtone downloads to hit the scene in a while has got to be from condomcondom.org.
The BBC World Service Trust has launched the site and the downloadable ringtone in an effort to promote safer sex and to erase the social stigma attached to condoms in India. As you might know, HIV/AIDS is a growing problem in India. The Advocate reports that nearly 2.5 million Indians are infected. The BBC group (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation) as well as other Indian health experts are hoping this ringtone will make people more comfortable with talking about the illness and safer sex in general.
This is a great site and it's an awesome way to get people talking seriously about sex. It's also pretty freakin' hilarious. We could all stand to be more comfortable talking about sex and the precautions necessary for us all to have as much of it as possible.
Check out the site and the ringtone. It's sure to put a smile on your face.
Posted on Wed, 27 Aug 2008, 01:03:05 PM
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8/22/2008
An Open Letter to Secretary Leavitt
By Mary Jane Gallagher
Dear Secretary Leavitt,
I write to you concerning new regulations your department submitted this last week. Although the latest draft does not contain the same overt anti-contraception language as the earlier draft, we in the family planning community still have some questions and concerns.
We are deeply concerned that the new rules could infringe on access to family planning services. You mentioned in your comments that groups might seek to press the definition of abortion. We know what that means. There are forces at work that seek to deprive American families of their access to safe and effective methods of contraception by expanding the definition of abortion to include these resources.
Already, groups opposed to contraception have announced their intention to "press the definition." Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, an openly anti-contraception group, told The Wall Street Journal that her group would do exactly that. She said it would be excellent if states were deprived of their family planning funding for insisting on providing contraception. Not abortion, Secretary Leavitt, but contraception.
If these rules are interpreted to include contraception, it would be disastrous for the millions of Americans that rely on federally-funded health care providers. Families would have no way to ensure their access to comprehensive medical services. In a time when there are over 47 million uninsured Americans, we must protect the inalienable right to choose whether or not to have a child.
Furthermore, these regulations could interfere with multiple state laws. These are compassionate laws that do things like require emergency rooms to offer rape victims emergency contraception so that they need not deal with the added pain of an unwanted pregnancy. From the far right to the left, we are all interested in ensuring that children are born to families that are prepared to care for them while still protecting the rights of health care professionals. If these rules are extended to contraception, that goal will become harder to attain.
HHS and the family planning community have maintained a delicate balance between the rights of families to access medical services and the consciences of individual medical service providers. If interpreted incorrectly, these regulations risk seriously disturbing that equilibrium.
What I ask of you, Secretary Leavitt, is to clarify the rules as they are proposed. Release a statement saying that pressing the definition of abortion to include contraception is an unacceptable distortion of these regulations. You can preserve access to comprehensive family planning with just a few words. Until you take these steps, we have no choice but to assume contraception was the target all along.
Sincerely,
 
Mary Jane Gallagher
President & CEO, National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association
Posted on Fri, 22 Aug 2008, 05:57:43 PM
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8/21/2008
Game Time
By Malcolm Harris, New Media Fellow
It's the day we've all been waiting for. HHS has issued the proposed "conscience" regulations and all of us at NFPRHA are hard at work reviewing and planning our next moves. We want all of you to know that we're on it, all hands are on deck and that we won't let Sec. Leavitt and the anti-contraception lobby force these regulations on medical service providers and their patients.
Please go back over our past blogs to see what we're dealing with. We'll have more information for you shortly, until then here's the link to the full online copy of the regulations so you can see for yourselves. Know that we're fighting back and it's far from over, but don't rest assured. Get online and e-mail your whole address book, call in to a talk show, write your congressperson, do something! We can only win with the help of all you who care, and it's game time.
Posted on Thu, 21 Aug 2008, 01:24:05 PM
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8/20/2008
Effective Virginity Pledges?
By David Castillo
A recent article in The Tennessean reported that a new study shows that teens who make virginity pledges appear to actually keep their promises. Well, at least for three years within making it.
The RAND Corporation conducted a phone survey of 2,000 teenagers, ages 12-17 and all of whom expressed some desire to delay having sex (which quickly made the study suspect to me). About 25 percent of those teens took some form of a pledge to abstain from sex until marriage. The Tennessean story says that 42.4 percent of those surveyed had sex within three years and that the figure dropped to 33.6 percent if they took a pledge. RAND concludes that teens aged 12-17 who make virginity, or purity pledges, are 21 percent less likely to have sex within three years of making them. The study was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
I guess I can't say that these pledges are necessarily a bad thing. But, they do weird me out. I'm not sure how many forms of these pledges are out there, but it seems like most of them require the pledge-maker to do so in front of their family, friends and/or church congregation. RAND's Steven Martino even compares the program to Weight Watchers!
At any rate, that's an enormous amount of pressure to put on a teenager, especially given their already raging hormones and the inability to control them. And, if I've resolved to hold off on doing it until marriage why must the whole town know about it. Sex is complex enough without worrying about an entire community wondering whether you're staying true to them and God. What about gay teens who can't get married or teens who have no plans to marry? Where do they fall in the mix?
I was also a little put off by the article as I found it to be a bit too biased. For ten paragraphs, the reporter writes about the seemingly positive effects of this bizarre act before quoting Martino who says that virginity pledges are not a substitute for comprehensive sex programs. Thank goodness for that, but the quote seems to be just kind of thrown in. It's followed by a quote from Richard Ross, the co-founder of True Love Waits at Tulip Grove Baptist Church who continues to laud the programs virtues. I wouldn't be surprised if the reporter, Dan Smeitana, was also a fan.
Only later in the article (and hopefully people are still reading by this point) does the article quote an anti-abstinence-only doctor who says that these pledges won't work for everyone. However, that's all the reader gets from him. So, in a 30 paragraph story, only a total of two sources caution reading too much into these findings. One of those sources was from the RAND Corporation itself so one can't expect too much skepticism, if any.
You just know that it's just a matter of time before the abstinence-only folks start using this research as proof that that form of sex education can work for anyone. They'll rant about this despite RAND and doctors saying pledges aren't for everyone and that it should be part of a comprehensive approach. They will surely gloss over the fact that the students who said they had kept their pledge were more likely to abstain for just three years. Then what? What does this mean for the 15 year-old who took the pledge when he or she was 12? Does that percentage go up?
Virginity pledges may be effective. At least what The Tennessean wants me to believe, but I'm going to require a bit more research and some better reporting before I buy into them as a possible and viable solution to curbing teen pregnancy.
Posted on Wed, 20 Aug 2008, 03:54:37 PM
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8/18/2008
It Depends on Your Definition of 'Abstinence'....
By Malcolm Harris
A University of Washington study published earlier this summer found that teens can have a positive view of abstinence, and yet still engage willfully in sexual behavior. The news that any person, especially teens, could hold contradictory yet coexisting feelings about sex should not be surprising. Nor should it surprise anyone who's paying attention that abstinence-only sex education doesn't work for a lot of reasons, another conclusion in the report.
The most interesting conclusion in the report, which was published in the current edition of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, is that a teen's view of abstinence isn't as predictive of sexual activity as what the author calls their sexual intention . Basically the idea is that abstinence intention is distinct from sexual intention. A teen's view of abstinence could be overwhelmingly positive, but if their interest in having sex is high, then a higher intention to abstinence actually increases their likelihood of sexual activity. Meanwhile, a teen that couldn't care less about abstinence or purity but also isn't that interested in having sex probably won't.
N. Tatiana Masters postulates a sort of "boomerang effect" that causes teens with a strong positive view of abstinence, but with a correspondingly high sexual intention, to head for sexual activity. These would be the teens that "break" due to conflicting feelings about sex.
I think the conclusion of the study speaks volumes: "Youth do not consider abstinence and sexual activity opposing constructs, and solely instilling positive abstinence attitudes and intentions in youth may not have robust effects in preventing sexual activity." In other words, teens can think abstinence is totally a fantastic choice, and still go have sex when they want to. What it shows is that teens are going to have sex if they want to, even if your abstinence message is getting through.
All abstinence messaging seems to do from this report is confuse the hell out of kids who wanted to have sex. It doesn't make them any less likely to have sex mind you, just more confused about it when they do.
Now that we can see that there is nothing society gains from these abstinence programs, can we stop preaching in schools and get down to facts? What's confusing to these teens is the same thing that confuses adults, "If I'm not supposed to have sex, why do I want to?" Since this study reveals that this conundrum doesn't push young people away from sex, but rather into it, it seems logical to stop the abstinence moralizing and start teaching.
Teens are going to have sex. Not just because the media depicts sex so glamorously or because of peer pressure and a desire to fit in, but because, as this report tells us, some teens want to have sex. It's time the radical-right stopped trying to get teens to see the light, because it turns out that even at best they don't care.
Abstinence advocates need to realize they're ultimately going to lose and reformat their goals a little bit. Very few teenagers will become nuns or clergymen and most will eventually have sex outside of marriage. As Bill Albert, chief program officer of National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy told MSNBC, "We hear confusion from kids about the term 'abstinence' and what it means. They say 'abstinent from what?' and 'abstinent until when?'"
Phrasing abstinence as the correct moral decision means teens have to commit for life or face the psychological consequences. A program that talked about abstinence solely as the best way to avoid pregnancy and a STI would be more effective. Teachers could ask students how long they plan to abstain (if at all) and what methods they plan to use to protect themselves if they become active. I'd bet there would be a lot of answers that are situational rather than time-dependent, answers like, Until I fall in love or Until I feel ready . Adults need to start acting more, well, adult and recognize that decisions are dependent on the individual and their circumstance and any blanket prohibition that doesn't recognize this is courting disaster. The choice to become sexually active is hard enough without a moral shaming carried out by public schools.
What this research says is that teachers aren't going to talk students into going to have sex, the ones that want to will and those that don't won't. All such comprehensive education programs would do is teach students how to preserve their sexual health and avoid causing dangerous psychological strain in America's teens.
This study made me think of the play Equus about a teenage boy who can't handle the contradictory moral messages of his mother's religious sexual conservatism and his father's porn habit combined with his own desires and ends up going crazy and blinding a bunch of horses with spikes. I didn't see anything about horse-blinding in the report, but the consequences of a teen jumping unprepared into sex because he or she is confused can be just as serious.
Posted on Mon, 18 Aug 2008, 10:00:49 AM
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