Fr. Roger J. Landry
The Anchor
Editorial
September 12, 2008
On Valentine’s Day this year, the New Bedford Standard Times ran a front-page article documenting the latest data on teen pregnancy rates in Massachusetts. The article said that in 2006, New Bedford had the state’s fifth highest adolescent birthrate, 70 births per 1,000 females ages 15-19. The rate in New Bedford was over three times the state average of 21.3 and up nearly 16 percent from the Whaling City’s 2005 figure of 58.9.
The findings could have easily provided an occasion for further articles and editorials on why the comprehensive sexual education curriculum in the New Bedford public schools seems to be failing repeatedly, at least 207 times in New Bedford in 2006 alone. None came. The thrust of the Valentine’s Day news article was on the various challenges educators face in persuading young people to put into practice the messages they were receiving in the programs: the failure in New Bedford was not in the curriculum itself, the article suggested, but with the teenagers who failed to follow the curriculum’s message. Sometimes teenagers simply don’t listen to the best of advice. Fair enough.
Last Monday, however, when news came that Bristol Palin, the 17 year-old daughter of Republican Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, was pregnant, the Standard Times did not apply the same standard. Nor did many of the leading national news outlets. Because Governor Palin is a strong supporter of abstinence-based sexual education, there was a drive to use Bristol’s pregnancy as an illustration that such abstinence-based curricula do not work. The problem in her case was not that she failed to listen to her parents’ and teachers’ advice — for if she did, and actually abstained from sexual activity, she obviously would not be pregnant — but that the message failed her..
The Standard Times argued in a September 3 editorial, “The political significance of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy comes not from the private side of things, not from its reflection on Gov. Palin as a mother, but from what it says about the ill-informed abstinence-only platform she and the social conservatives of the Republican Party promote.” The editorial then asserted the “failure of abstinence-only programs” to prevent teenage pregnancy, and boldly called those promoting these programs “unconscionable” for “building an iron curtain against the truth,” “abdicat[ing] their responsibility,” and putting “false morality above our children’s health” for the sake of “ideology.”
Therefore, if the Palins and Wasilla High School use an abstinence-based approach, one teenage girl ignores it and becomes pregnant, the Standard Times implies, it’s not only an indication of the breakdown of the whole methodology but a moral indictment of those who support it. If the New Bedford School Department, however, uses a “comprehensive” — condom-based — sexual education curriculum, 200 girls presumably ignore it and get pregnant, there must be some other cause.
The editorial naively seems to suggest that if Bristol Palin and boyfriend Levi Johnson were not living behind an “iron curtain” of ignorance unconscionably erected by their parents and fellow Alaskan educational rednecks, if they had only received information about the wondrous invention of the condom and how it miraculously prevents pregnancy even during the act by which pregnancies are naturally designed to occur, everything now would be all right. The reality is that — no matter what their parents have said and sexual education curricula have taught — by the time bright young people like Bristol and Levi get to be 17, they all know what a condom is, what it does, and where it is available. They all know about the basics of how one gets pregnant and contracts sexually-transmitted diseases. The question is what they do with the information.
The debate about the superiority of abstinence-based or condom-based sexual education is not fundamentally about information, but about formation. It concerns which of the approaches most effectively helps young people to acquire the proper behaviors — virtues — that will help them make the appropriate choices in the realm of the gift of their sexuality. The abstinence-based approach communicates to young people that adults have confidence in them that they can acquire the type of self-mastery to make choices consistent with their long-term goals. The condom-based approach basically communicates that adults are pessimistic about their ability to order their sexual impulses toward higher goods; therefore, rather than helping young people to learn to control their libido rather than be controlled by it, they seek through a technological pseudo-solution merely to limit the undesired consequences of the sexual drive.
It’s clear that neither approach, no matter how well communicated, will be 100 percent effective, because there will always be young people who choose to ignore the advice, either deliberately or in the heat of the moment. It’s obvious, however, that if abstinence-based education is actually followed, not only will it be totally successful in terms of the prevention of pregnancy, but it will also prevent so many of the harmful emotional, physiological, social and spiritual consequences of teenage mutual sexual utilitarianism. Even if condom-based education is followed to the letter, on the other hand, young people may still end up not only pregnant or with STDs through the normal condom failure rates, but often will head toward adult relationships and marriage with used bodies and broken hearts.
The USA Today, in a September 3 editorial, argued that “in an ideal world,” abstinence-only programs would be sufficient, but in the “real world, the one of raging hormones and highly sexualized pop culture,” the programs are ineffective. “You tell your children not to drink,” the editors contend, “but you also teach them that if they do, they shouldn’t drive.” In the “real world,” most kids are going to ignore their adults’ advice and drink anyway, they assert; therefore the wise thing to do is to try to prevent an even greater harm to themselves and to others.
With regard to their pessimistic assumption, it is obvious that some teenagers will disregard their parents’ and teachers’ about alcohol — just like they will about speeding or drunk-driving — but there are also many who will follow it. The first question, one of prudence and overall formation, is whether it’s wiser to try aggressively and passionately to reinforce the message about drinking, and form young people to say “yes” to greater goals and “no” to teenage booze, or whether we should capitulate to the fact we won’t be 100-percent successful and start to behave as if the “real problem” is just drunk-driving.
Second, we must be honest and mature enough to admit that when comprehensive sex education says, “Don’t drink, but if you do, don’t drive,” it actually undercuts the appeal of the latter imperative by presuming that the first will be ignored. It is also hopelessly naïve. To precise the analogy, comprehensive sexual education actually communicates, “We know that you’re not only going to drink, but probably going to get drunk no matter what we say. So we want you to be able to drink ‘safely’ by knowing how to make drinks correctly and knowing what risky side-effects are to various victuals. And since we know that when you’re drunk you’re probably not going to be able to think clearly and not get behind the wheel, before you go out, we implore you and want to show you how to put this extensive padding on the outside of your car to minimize the harm to you and others. Please don’t drive drunk unless you have this padding. If you have the padding, though you’ll be “safe’ and — though we don’t really want to admit it — probably like and get addicted to the ride.”
That sounds a lot like it would be an unconscionable abdication of responsibility in favor of a false morality that puts a libertine ideology about the good of true good of our children.