Abstinence
Free Congress Foundation's
Notable News Now
Washington, D.C., January 25, 2002
The Free Congress Commentary
Making the Case for Abstinence
By Connie Marshner
There's good news and there's bad news.
The good news is teen pregnancy rates in the United States are at the lowest
in 24 years. The bad news is 10,000 teens per day contract a
Sexually-Transmitted Disease (STD). Nationally, one in four Americans has
an STD.
The good news is the bad news: Eight out of ten girls and six out of ten
boys who had sex as teenagers wish they had waited.
But in Chicago earlier this month, at the Power of Abstinence rally
sponsored by Project Reality, it was all good news. It was good news for a
culture desperately in need of change. Its message was clear: Abstinence
works, abstinence is achievable. You can wait.
Project Reality is one of the abstinence pioneers in the nation. For years,
its curricula have forged the way in public schools: abstinence does not
have to be a faith-based initiative. Common sense and cold hard statistics
provide reasons enough to avoid heartbreak and disease.
At the center of the rally were 13 titleholders in Miss America and other
pageants. Miss Black USA 2002-2003, Miss Michigan - All American Latina
2001, Miss Allegheny Valley 2002, Miss Southern Illinois 2001 were some of
the names on the tags.
The other guests were about 300 high school students from Chicagoland -
mostly from public high schools, mostly at risk. Precisely the segment of
the population that needs to have positive role models.
The pageant winners were in ball-gowns, wearing their crowns. They
personified glamour. During the reception, they talked with the teens,
posed for pictures, and signed autographs. After the banquet, they
performed their talent, singing or playing an instrument mostly, though one
read some thumping good poems. And some of them talked about why they were
there.
They were there because they have all chosen abstinence as their platform.
Pageant contestants have to have a platform, some area in which they are
trying to improve the world. If a young woman's platform is some disease,
for instance, she has to have activities educating the public or raising
money for a cure.
The titleholders at the Power of Abstinence are all working to improve the
world by promoting public awareness of the benefits of sexual abstinence.
Generally, their action is speaking to high school students about
abstinence.
These young women chose abstinence because they felt it was an area of life
where there's a vacuum, a vacuum they could help fill. Most of them had
practiced abstinence because they were taught those values at home, and
hadn't really thought much about it... until their friends and classmates
succumbed to STD's or welfare status to support a baby. One young woman had
come to the position out of conviction, and mentioned in private that her
parents, former hippies, "don't mind it."
And after a banquet, and in between performing their talent, some of them
told their stories. Ashley Huff, Miss Nevada 2001, always believed in
abstinence, so she wouldn't date by the rules typical in public high
schools, where normal "dating" is serial monogamy without benefit of clergy.
She was willing to date, but not any one person exclusively. As a result,
nobody would date her. With a catch in her throat, she recalled that she
had no date for her junior prom. Every girl there could identify with her
pain.
But the story didn't end there. In college, Ashley met a young man who also
had a conviction for abstinence, and she fell in love with him. She trusted
him, and shared her heart with him. Then he dumped her. She cried all
night. But the next morning, when she looked in the mirror, she was able to
smile. She smiled because she had the satisfaction of knowing that while
she had given him her heart, she hadn't given him her body. He hadn't
gotten everything. She still had her self-respect. She still had within
herself the basis for pulling herself together and moving on with her life.
Nitia, another pageant winner, had a more tragic story. She had been raped
by a relative. The trauma of that put her on a downward spiral, and she
became very sexually active, though she hated herself for doing it. Then
one day she heard an abstinence message in a church group. A man took two
pieces of adhesive tape and stuck them together. Then he tried to separate
them. Needless to say, they wouldn't come apart. "That's the way you want
your marriage to be," he said, "unbreakable."
Then he took a couple pieces of adhesive tape, and wrapped them first around
his sleeve, and then tried to stick them together. They wouldn't stick.
"That's what happens if people are sexually active," he said, "they can't
stick together." It hit Nitia like a ton of bricks. She realized that
what she wanted the most in life is for one person to belong to just her,
her husband. And she realized that if she kept on the way she was going,
she wouldn't be able to have that.
Nitia promised herself she would practice what is called "secondary
virginity." She reformed. Her friends didn't believe in her: "No way, you
can't do it, girl," they laughed. But she did it. As she concluded by
telling how she has kept that promise, the students started applauding, then
stood up and continued applauding. They knew exactly how hard her choice
has been. And they loved her for her courage.
Ashley and Nitia reached 300 kids that evening. Not a very large drop in
the bucket compared to the numbers reached in every school by the
federally-subsidized (Title X) Planned Parenthood message that tells the lie
of "safe sex." All the more reason why perhaps there should be parity in
federal spending between Title X and Title V (abstinence education).
But perhaps, in that one drop, after hearing Ashley and Nitia speak, eight
out of ten young women and six out of ten young men in the audience will not
have to regret being sexually active. Maybe because they have heard these
young women, they too, will know the power of abstinence.
* The majority of high school students are virgins, and this percentage is
increasing.
* 93% of teens feel that teens should be given a strong message that
abstinence is the best choice.
* Most teens who have been sexually active regret doing so.
* One out of five sexually-active teen girls in the U. S. gets pregnant.
* One out of four sexually active American teens has a sexually-transmitted
disease.
* Condoms give no protection against diseases passed through skin contact,
such as Human Papilloma Virus, the most prevalent STD and the leading cause
of cervical cancer.