physician’s assistant that gave my 12 and 15 year-old boys their sport
physicals, surprised me by also giving a mini sex talk. I was somewhat
speechless at the time, but after collecting my thoughts, I wrote a letter.
you asked my 12-year-old son: “Do you know about sex?” Following his slow nod, you rapid-fired your
next question. “Do you know about condoms?” He was there for a sport physical.
interrupted: “We don’t teach our
children that it’s okay to have sex before marriage, and condoms have a failure
rate, so pregnancies still happen. Condoms don’t always prevent against STD’s
either.”
it’s better than nothing,” you replied.
moved onto another topic until the next patient came in: my 15 year-old
son. “Do you know about sex?” you asked
once again. I explained he had been at a
teen youth conference that summer and they talked about sex. That sufficed apparently to skip the condom
question.
earlier, a nurse had asked if we wanted to our religious faith put into our records so as to be reflected in our medical care. My answer was yes. So, here is what the Catholic Church teaches and
what faithful Catholics follow.
their children. Your desire
is to do the right thing but you and I don’t agree on what that is. My husband
and I answer to God for the upbringing of our children. You do not have the right to usurp our authority.
are merely asking them if they know how to
have sex. There’s more to the lesson. God
did not create us to use each other for pleasure. Sex is a gift for couples
committed in marriage in love, and willing to care for children that may
result.
“Eighteen percent of couples who use condoms and 12 percent who take the Pill
become pregnant within two years.” Most women seeking abortions do so
because of failed contraception.
fatherhood or child support payments for the next 18 years, or that his first
child might be aborted.
responsibility talk? That
should go with sex, wouldn’t you agree?
tsunami, but I’m hoping you aren’t prescribing it to your female teen patients. If you do,
please read the book Sweetening the Pill
by Holly Grigg-Spall. She is hostile
toward religion and has no problem with sex outside of marriage so that’s why I
suggest it to you—it is not just about my Catholic faith. As a health reporter and former user of the
pill, Holly wonders why feminists are turning a blind eye to reams of
scientific evidence on the destructiveness of hormonal contraception. Women are being destroyed emotionally,
mentally, and physically, some even suffer death and permanent disability,
because hormonal contraception is a type 1 carcinogen with lethal tendencies. If you prescribe something, you have a
responsibility to know what it does to your patients.
Give a teen contraception and…well, what do we expect? I know not all your patients agree with me,
but asking kids if they know about condoms is saying one thing: Have at
it. There is a better message. Don’t
scoff at the abstinence message and instead choose the harmful one just to fit
in with the world’s crumbling values.
read it here: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6humana.htm)
Or, you can read the new book On Human
Life http://www.ignatius.com/Products/OHL-P/on-human-life.aspx,
because it references many sociological studies that attest to the damage
contraception has done to society. It
includes Humanae Vitae and an historical account for what happened regarding
the Catholic reaction. I’d be happy to give you a copy if you are interested.
not protect 100%. In the interest of
full disclosure, teenagers (and twelve-year-olds) should know that sex +
contraception could = pregnancy or STD’s—some of which are incurable.
Centers for Disease Control, “Simply put, condoms fail. And condoms fail at a
rate unacceptable for me as a physician to endorse them as a strategy to be
promoted as meaningful AIDs protection.”
hole in a condom much more easily than sperm. The AIDS virus is so small that
two million of the disease-causing agents can fit on the period at the end of a
sentence. In 1993, the University of Texas found the results of 11 different
studies tracking AIDS prevention showed that the average condom failure rate
for preventing the AIDS virus was 31%. One reason is the many tiny intrinsic
holes in condoms that the virus can pass through. [Source: Dr. C. M. Roland,
editor of Rubber Chemistry and Technology]. And there is more than just AIDS. In the 1950s
there were only five STDs but today there are more than 50.
and travels around the world giving talks to teens in both private and public
schools. She worked for nine years as a pregnancy counselor in Chicago and Minneapolis
and had to tell hundreds of girls their pregnancy tests were positive. During an interview she once told me: “’You’re pregnant,’ I would tell them. ‘There
is no easy way out of pregnancy. Abortion is painful, destructive, and
devastating. More than 80 percent of the women in our country who’ve had an
abortion say that if they could go back, they would have chosen something
different. And raising a child is not easy either.’”
than recommending condoms. Perhaps many would commit or
recommit to abstinence if they knew of the Brigham Young University study that
found couples that waited until marriage to have sex had the highest percent of
happiness by 22 percent. “Regardless of religiosity, waiting helps the
relationship form better communication processes, and these help improve
long-term stability and relationship satisfaction,” study author Dean Busby, Ph.D.
stated.
Studies repeatedly show that sex outside of marriage is emotionally
destructive in the long run and has been linked to low self-esteem, later marital
dissatisfaction, and greater likelihood of divorce.
According to a study by the National Survey of Family Growth, premarital
sex increases the odds of divorce by about 60 percent. People who have
premarital sex run a greater risk of marrying someone who’s not right for them.
Sexual intimacy can be emotionally blinding; clouding judgment and making
couples feel closer than they really are.
So buying a
condom for a night of fun is a bad idea at best and fatal at worst. But it’s
hard for kids to figure that out when adults in authority give them the
message: Go ahead and have sex, just buy a condom first. At least
give them full disclosure. Warning: Use of this product could ruin your mental
and physical health and lead to poverty, depression, failed marriages, and
death.
Instagram version sex talk promotes the message that sex and condoms are a good
idea even for a 12-year-old. Do you really believe that?
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