Why Do Pro-Life Activists Oppose Sex Education?
I'm often asked by pro-choice friends why pro-lifers oppose sex education, family planning, and contraception. Don't those approaches reduce unintended pregnancy and therefore the numbers of abortions? It's a question at the heart of efforts to achieve "common ground" on abortion.
So I emailed Jill Stanek, an important pro-life leader (she's the Chicago nurse who almost single handedly made Barack Obama's opposition to Illinois' "born alive" legislation a big issue in the 2008 campaign). A "non-denominational Christian," she speaks around the nation and blogs at JillStanek.com.
My goal here was not to assess or challenge everything Jill said but to tease out one answer: why -- really -- do pro-life leaders resist birth control as a way of reducing the number of abortions?
The most important points in my email exchange with Stanek were:
1) She believes that contraception and sex ed increase the number of unintended pregnancies
2) Even if she could be convinced that sex ed reduced the number of abortions, she still would not support it.
Many in the comment threads on my original post have attempted to rebut point #1, but I'm fascinated by point #2. She says she would never support sex ed because:
a) "The logic behind them is hypocritical. Assuming you're married, would your wife send you out of town on a business trip after slipping a condom in your suitcase and saying, "Honey, I want you to be faithful, but here's protection just in case you slip up..."?
b) Contraceptives are the root of abortion. "Contraceptive" means anti-conception. Contraceptives establish a mindset of hostility toward the blessing of children.c) Sex outside of marriage is a sin.... We do not say, don't murder but here's how in case you can't resist.... We do not say, don't commit adultery but here's how in case you can't resist. We have to resist the culture and think the same way about premarital sex."
I don't happen to think pre-marital sex between consenting adults is inherently sinful but as a thought experiment, I accepted Jill's assertion that sex education leads to various unfortunate consequences -- let's even call them sins: the sin of hypocrisy, the sin of devaluing the blessing of children, the sin of sanctioning premarital sex.
But here's what I don't get. Even if those are sins, aren't they lesser sins than murder, which is what Jill thinks abortion is? Wouldn't she accept more premarital sex in exhange for fewer abortions?
No -- and her reason is fascinating and important.
"The idea of authorizing 'lesser sins' to decrease 'greater sins' is not Scriptural. In fact, Scripture teaches the opposite phenomenon occurs: Little sins lead to bigger sins. They don't sate. You should know satan works in quite the opposite direction, enticing us in small, seemingly innocuous ways."
This surprised me. Most religions differentiate between the severity of sins, I thought. Is it possible that a different theology underlies some of the pro-life thinking?
I asked David Gushee, a moderate evangelical professor at Mercer University, to respond Stanek's scriptural interpretation. He wrote:
"At one level, all sins are the same, if we define sin as disobedience to God's will. All violate God's will and displease God.
But all sins are not equally weighty. This can be clearly shown from scripture, as when Jesus condemned certain Jewish religious leaders for "neglecting the weightier matters of the law." Wearing suggestive clothing is not as weighty as having extramarital sex. Slapping a face is not as weighty as killing someone. Weightiness has to do with the gravity of the sin as this is taught in scripture and also with its significance in impact on other people's lives and on our own life.
Moreover, sometimes lesser sins appear to be affirmed in scripture where they prevent greater wrongs. The Hebrew midwives lied to save the Jewish babies from murder, and they are affirmed. Rahab lied to save the Jewish spies. She is treated as a hero. Divorce is against God's will, but provisions are made for it in both OT and NT.
These examples are rare, but they do occur.
I think the category of concessions to sin is helpful. Jesus treated divorce as a sad concession to human sin and called his disciples to do better. But Matthew at least has Jesus saying that divorce is permitted (as a concession) to deal with sexual sin/adultery."
Question for my pro-life readers. Let's posit that that more sex education leads to more premarital sex. Let's assume for the moment that it also led to fewer unintended pregnancies and abortions. Would you accept more premarital sex if it meant fewer abortions?
More from Steven Waldman at Beliefnet here.
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The pro-lifers who oppose contraception for everyone frequently use the argument that anyone who doesn't want children shouldn't have sexual relations. I find this very strange since the average American wants two or three children. Am I to understand that married people should remain abstinent for 200 months, approximately 16 years, during the first 25 years of their marriage? That's a lot of self-control.
Or should all married couples be like the Duggars (those human hamsters and their 18 children whose reality show I see being promoted everywhere on cable TV when I'm not quick enough to change the channel)?
These scenerios are the two logical conclusions of the anti-birth control crowd's arguments. I wish they'd be more specific about which one they prefer.
Ask they why Republicans oppose the living wage where a young man can take care of kids and a family.
I don't like the designation of anti-choice people as being "pro-life," since it implies that the rest of us are pro-death. In regard to the question posed in the headline, though, I think that the anti-choice people oppose sex ed for the same reason they oppose contraception and elective abortion: they don't want to deal with the issue of sex on any level. Especially not the issue of sex their children might be having.
To believe their position has anything to do with religion is to put the cart before the horse. Rather, their choice of religion reflects their fear of the world and their need to have all difficult decisions made for them by others. Fearful people chose fundamental religions the world over, and those religions succeed to the degree that they cater to and augment the fears of their members.
People who are afraid - and unable - to think about an issue look for easy answers. "Just say no" is an easy answer to just about anything, as is abstinence. The fact that these approaches do not work is one more thing the anti-choice people do not want to think about.
People who are anti-choice for others obviously do not recognize the necessity for choice in their own lives. Perhaps we should feel sorry for such fearful, close-minded people, but sympathy for their plight is hard to achieve when they are being such idiots about other people's decisions.
Also pro life implies that these people care about what happens to the fetus after it is born. They do not. If they did, they would support education, health care, welfare, etc.
They are PRO-BIRTH.
Nothing more.
Interesting comments considering that the most vocal and judgmental are out their scre**ing everything they can.
It is my personal belief that Nature is working hard to solve the abortion and contraceptive issues for us, along with the health care crisis, food shortages, and global warming Here is my hypothesis as to how she will perform this ”miracle".
We have created god in our own image, along with religious teachings of anthropocentrism (the world revolves around humans, we rule over all other living things, and we are free to go forth and multiply without limit). As a result of this arrogant attitude, the current human population far exceeds the planet’s carrying capacity, perhaps by double.
From an evolutionary perspective, when other living species exceed the carrying capacity of their environment, nature deals with it through starvation, predators, and illness until the species is either driven down to a sustainable level or driven to extinction. It seems to me that we are now on her list, and the results will not be pretty.
It could be just a matter of time until humans become susceptible to illnesses (such as pandemics and epidemics) for which there are no cures (perhaps already happening), along with low sperm count in men and infertility in women (perhaps already happening). The resulting increase in death rate and decrease in birth rate will speed up the process of solving all of our social ills.
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www
I always saw it as jealousy.
They see other people having fun and CAN'T STAND it...so the "murder of innocent children" becomes the acceptable talking point, but...
Strip it all away as Mr. Waldman has very nicely done and you get to the root of it....
They really just want you to not have more fun than they will allow themselves
For the Right-wingers who believe in "Moral Absolutes" as to the sanctity of life, then why be PRO-death penalty? Or where is the moral disgust to enlistment in a military which requires you to oppose the sanctity of a foreign life and kill insurgents? Is a non-US life more "santified"? Truth is, there is NEVER a "Moral Absolute" of right and wrong but only shades of grey. A friend was aghast at abortion as a method of birth control since "It was a life being taken..." but she hedged her bets by saying it should be allowed for incest or rape. I said that her comment then throws her rationale out the window - by that moral absolute, it is a life whether brought about by RAPE, INCEST or CHOICE. Again, shades of grey. SO to the lunatic who accused Liberals of NEVER being able to see absolute right from wrong: enough with the "Little white lies.."!!!
Simple answer: It's about CONTROL;
Keeping women under the thumb of a skewed ideology that only values them as a "womb with a view".
When there is no access to education and contraception, the unplanned pregnancies and abortion rates go UP.
Education and access are the only way we will evolve as a society to value everyone in it.
Empowered women contribute to society in ways that chattel never will.
Absolutely agree with this assessment. Centuries of misogyny make even women believe they need to be controlled.
I have known many pro-life people who support birth control and sex ed, but unfortunately, they're not the right-wing types who control the movement.
The Senate's highest Democrat, Harry Reid, is a pro-lifer who has been supportive of contraception.
pro-lifers WILL NOT accept more premarital sex if it meant fewer abortions.
Their real mission is as irrational CONTROL FREAKS, IDEALOGUES and HYPOCRITES.
Republicans tapped in to this crackpot voter base to win elections, milking them like cows.
...bitter much?.....
We are not out to control people. We just want people to show self control.
You want other people to control themselves, per your particular beliefs and religious convictions? But you aren't out to contro people? Hmmmm. Very confusing point you make.
I am all for self control, but I reserve the right to do what I want with my body, my life, and a definite say as to who will have access to my bedroom and my womb...THA
Control by others over my body and my life is powerlessness.
Question for you Pro-Abortion types:
How do you reconcile the contradiction between believing that a fetus is not a person worthy of protection, but a person at some later stage is?
What is it that you think happens in between that somehow makes a person worthy, when before they apparently weren't worth caring about?
Because the fetus isn't a person. If the fetus were able to live outside of the mother's body, then we would be talking about a quasi-person that deserves some rights.
How made you the arbiter of who is a person?
You seem to take it as an a priori position that viability is what matters in the worth of the person.
Why?
Please try to defend that position.
.. an add on comment.
You seem to be making the argument that because you can have the power over another person, you should.
This is a very bad method of determining moral behavior.
First of all, it makes you sound really pretty dumb to say "Pro abortion", since virtually no one is pro abortion. People just pro-choice, as in "its none of your business".
To answer your (not very logical) question, No, I wouldn't say it is okay to have more pre-marital (or extra-marital, or any other kind of sin you care to name) in exchange for fewer abortions.
Having fewer abortions is a good thing. But it isn't correct to do one wrong, in order to avoid another.
This is something that liberals have a hard time with. Since they have no concept of absolute right or wrong, they don't "get" that some things are always worth fighting for.
Please remember that although abortion is awful, it isn't the dying that we mourn for. After all, we all die.
It is the loss of humanity that says someone else is dispensable that is so awful.
Some things are always worth fighting for, perhaps. But when do the sacrifices of that fight become too much and the fight not worth it? Would it not be more reasonable, just and moral to allow abortion of a fetus that would not survive outside of the womb, if, say that fetus is born with half a skull and no brain? Would it not be more moral and just to allow the abortion of one fetus where there are complications that would prevent the mother from having future children? No, there are NO moral absolutes, because that assumes that all pregnancies are equal and that all circumstances of all pregnancies can be controlled to the point where every baby born is the perfect little soul that Christians believe everyone is. As if there are no disabilities, no babies born with brain damage, and no mothers who are ever irrepairably damaged by pregnancies that prevent them from having future pregnancies.
The fight is always worth it.
There are moral absolutes.
If you don't believe in absolutes, then you must believe everything is relative. And if everything is relative, then you can justify anything.
You are talking about people who make those choices for health reasons. Social reasons and health reasons are 2 different things again. A discussion of birth defects and childbirth injuries is something that is definitely overdue. But we keep hearing about social issues such as poverty and marital status. If we want to reduce the number of abortions, (common ground) we need to recognize the variety of different reasons why someone might seek to have one.
Your point would be valid if one were to assume that sex outside of marriage is wrong. No one has been able to show that yet that doesn't rely STRICTLY on religion!
My personal belief is that premarital sex is not wrong. In fact, I personally believe that it is a bad idea to consider marrying someone you have never even had sex with and I would not encourage my daughters to marry someone they had lived with for less than a year. I also don't believe that being married makes it okay to have as many babies as you end up making. I think a lot of people believe as I do but don't state it outright. How can we as a culture appear to be accepting of sexual freedom and yet many claim to adhere to ancient cultural traditions that have nothing to do with our own modern world?
You realize that there is no God, right?
It's just a lie...made up by smart people thousands of years ago, to get dumb people to do what they were told and to give up their money.
So, throw out your all sins are equal in the eyes of God for a minute....
One "sin" you believe to be murder, they other is lying at worst....t
So, you admit then, you don't care about the fetus, you just want God to think you are great, right?
There is a HUGE difference between pre marital sex and extra marital sex as far as whether or not they are a sin. You may say that is only my opinion, but it does seem to be what most people act like they believe. But that is another subject entirely from abortion.
Your blog is just too logical.
You don't want to be confusing these poor pro-lifers with logic.
The Pro-Life movement is perfectly logical.
You just don't like the precepts that they start with.
No the pro-life movement is not logical when it believes that pain and suffering has a purpose, even in cases where that pain and suffering never ends, therefore it is not possible to learn from said pain and suffering. What is the point of a baby suffering from the pain and agony of being born with half a skull or half a brain that won't even be able to be viable outside the womb?
Wrong. The pro-life movement is only logical if you start from the assumption that religion is a logical thought process!
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