High Schoolers should learn about every contraception method available including abstinence.
They need to know the details about every option.
They need to be well equipped to protect themselves from STDs as well as pregnancy. What methods of contraception they can choose from and how to use them.
Older High Schoolers need to know about falling in love and sexual responsibility.
If they choose abstinence and find this difficult they need to know ways of having sex without penetration, or love without intercourse, and masturbation.

They need to talk to pregnant teenagers, single mothers, young married couples, women who’ve had abortions, alcoholics, drugs users and AIDS patients; they need to learn what the cause-effect is of the choices they make. Not in one lesson but over a period over ALL of their school years.
They need to see pictures/clips of abortions at different stages, about the difficulties of pregnancy and birth and parenthood, and the responsibilities that are attached to it.
They eed to know that looking after a baby is different from looking after their tamagotchi.

Teens who party need to know dangers of drugs and how to prevent having irresponsible sex when under influence of drugs e.g. alcohol. Ignoring this during sex-ed won’t prevent pregnancies.

They also need to know what to do when things went wrong. Plan B, which is the morning-after-pill.
Good sex education it’s based on real lives of real teenagers but the knowledge will serve them for much of their lives.

About forcing pregnant women to watch pictures of their embryo, just for some balance I hope you also show them pictures of neglected, unwanted, or abused children that mothers were pushed to carry full-term.

Aqvarivs
“Celivia has it worked out … that regardless of circumstance the man pays.”
Untrue! I have said all along that I agree that the law needs to be more flexible so individual cases can be handled differently if required.

“….the woman comes first. (Not that they would ever admit that:-))”
I would, and I have. Abortion is a woman’s right, not a man’s right.

David,

My mothers family was Jewish and my fathers Protestant. I was baptised Protestant. I remember as a child going every week to a church until I was about 8 years old and then we didn’t go anyone. Still my parents put me through a Christian primary school and the more they went on about the religion the worse it was. The fights between the school children was no less if worse then that on a non-religious school.
I do not practice religion and when one of my daughters wanted to be baptised the minister told me that he would only do so if I forced the other children to attend to church. I made clear that if I had the right to force a child to go to church then I also had the right to deny my daughter to go to church, and I viewed that it simply was not my rights either way! If they wanted to pray in a field then so be it.
I do not practice religion, but obviously have kept what I consider to be the good values., not because of religious basis but because I simply like the values.
My wife (74) and a practicing Catholic, when asked by me if she agrees with abortion, she made clear that when a woman marries and fall pregnant she has absolutely no right to abort a child! I also asked her view when an unborn baby could be deemed to have a soul, if at all, and her view is that it commences at conception! Her view is also that a woman should wait until she is married before having children.
Actually, while she was engaged for many years and then broke off the engagement, she ended up first finishing her university studies, then worked for a few years before she then became married to her (now) late husband and she-was-a-virgin at the time of marriage.
To me, this so called de-facto-marriage is utter and sheer nonsense, as it allows a person to be married to one person and have de-facto-marriages with many others.

Thanks yabby, now I know what you and Celivia are talking about. Special rights and considerations under law governed by biology. So I guess in the future we will have a bipartite courts system. One for females and one for males. I know a lot of men who are going to be very pleased that their biology will now extricate them from difficult issues. You know men can't help being violent. It's their biology. Testosterone is a very aggressive hormone. Men are driven to procreation with multiple partners and it goes against biology to force men into monogamous relationships. Men shouldn't have to curtail their natural biological drives. And those men who don't exhibit such drive are probably estrogen dominate hormonally and natures culling factor in the perpetuation of the species, like gay men, simply not meant to breed and contribute to the future of the gene pool. if you don't agree with us check your estrogen levels. Oh man. I've had a lot of fun on this thread but, this takes the cake. Not to forget the animal kingdom analogy where a male bird keeps nest. What if you see yourself a little more masculine. Like say a lion. With this last post I'm off. Thanks again.

Aqva, attempts at ridicule, don't make your point, just show
you up as ridiculous :)

Clearly there is a difference between hormonal fluctuations and
being or not being pregnant.

You know I'm right of course, but as you have shown before,
you just enjoy arguing for the sake of it, not because your
arguments make any sense lol.

Dear One and All,

Thank you for being my conversation partners. I appreciated being tested by you.

Yabby, I think God has given resources to the earth far greater than you allow for, just as I think, as capable of mischief as the human race is, there are limits to that mischief.

Celivia, I agree that in wanting abortion to be legally available you are not imposing your view. My problem has always been that abortion means the taking of human life regardless of the circumstances under which that life came about. I have acknowledged in current circumstances no Government will ban abortions and there is nothing that any church or individual christian can do about that. But surely we can still protest a barbaric practice and call on Government to take actions to minimise the number of abortions.

Your answer to reducing the number of abortions is better sex education. I wish you well. My answer is that young people should come to Jesus Christ and follow his way of life with his enabling (I know this may sound daft, but I know it to be true!), and so recognise that sex as a wonderful gift of God to be celebrated in marriages open to and welcoming of children.

The problem with sex education per se, is that the issue of sexual relations is fundamentally a moral issue. If you believe the sexual act is not inherently, or of necessity, tied to marriage, given human propensity to mess things up, unplanned, unwanted pregnancies will always occur and with men unprepared to commit to the woman, an abortion becomes her last resort. I recommend Gertrude Himmelfarb’s, “The Demoralisation of Society”. (Check out www.bookfinder.com on availability). The people who have lost out big time from society’s acceptance of sexual relationships outside marriage have been the poor.

I believe Californication is showing on Channel 10 and no doubt watched by young people with or without their parent’s approval. I suggest on the basis of what I’ve heard about it, it unravels all your elaborate carefully thought through sex education.

David, we can be pleased that all prefer to see a reduction in abortion numbers. Thanks for the interesting article.
As you said, we have different answers to reach the common goal.

I still think that the two sides can work in harmony; all that is needed is respect for one another’s method and to not barricade that road for the other party to get to their end goal. Each of the two groups is distinct and the method that works best for them is the method that will prevent unplanned pregnancies.
One method won’t fit all!

I have no problem with admitting that your method (call it method 1) may be the perfect answer for people who have faith and ‘want’ to come to Jesus Christ and want to marry young and start a family.

But what you (and by ‘you’ I mean the group you stand for) fail to understand is that it is common sense to repeat the success of other countries that have shown HOW to reduce abortion numbers significantly by using the sex-ed and contraception method (call it method 2).
The countries that use method 2- good sex education and free or affordable contraception- in place have much more success in lowering abortion numbers than countries that use method 1.

Because of your idealistic though unrealistic expectation that all people should conform to YOUR standards, the ‘unborn babies’ you are so concerned about are unnecessarily being created and aborted.
What is more important to you- How people sexually behave, or how many ‘babies’ are being ‘killed’?
You KNOW that when you protest against the method that best prevent abortions, you are contributing to unnecessary abortions. Then why do you not stop opposing method 2?

If I saw 2 year-old children unnecessarily being taken into child-killing clinics by parents who didn’t want them, and I could choose from two methods to prevent this, I would surely opt for the method that would be more successful in preventing this, even if it wasn’t my preferred method.
I don’t know about you… but WWJD?