I’ve wondered for years why so many conservative Christians advocate abstinence-only sex education in America’s public schools. Abstinence-only education leads to unwanted pregnancies, and unwanted pregnancies lead to every conservative Christian’s worst nightmare: abortions. If fundamentalist Christians really want to minimize/ eliminate abortions, why are they working so hard to insure that we will always have unwanted teen pregnancies? My former, uneducated self would shrug and say, “Highly deficient logical thinking skills? Hypocrites?”
But after all this time of only sort of having a grasp on this highly contradictory situation, someone came along and made an interesting point on nytimes.com. Gail Collins has a hilarious column in the May 7 Times about what a terrible idea it is to make Bristol Palin an abstinence-only spokesperson. One reader, Susan in Los Angeles, posted the following in the online comments section:
It seems to me the “abstinence only” movement is fueled by Fundamentalist Christians who believe sex before marriage is a sin, therefore if you violate this rule and have sex before you’re married, you should be punished. (With a child or a disease.) At its core, “safe” sex threatens these people’s belief systems by giving people a reasonable and responsible alternative to sex only within the boundaries of marriage….
I think Susan in Los Angeles might be on to something. If she’s right, fundamentalists have chosen — consciously or sub-consciously — to sacrifice zygotes in the name of punishing those who engage in pre-marital sex. That’s an interesting interpretation of being “pro life.” Check out the Gail Collins article here.
