HRS

"The US government spent 12 times more money on promoting contraception and safe-sex education than it spent on abstinence sex education, and yet the rate of teenage pregnancy increased."

I find that hard to believe. Can you provide the reference?

"There is an extremely good correlation between teenage pregnancy and the high rates of fatherless children in the US."

That I'm not surprised to hear at all. Children from stable families do better in many respects than those from broken families. I agree that keeping fathers at home with their children benefits society in many ways.

"Having the father in the house is 7 times more effective than any sex education class or contraceptive ever developed for reducing teenage pregnancy..."

While I'm sure fathers make a huge difference, I find it odd that one could provide such a definitive statistic. Again, could I have the reference?

"Education is not a very reliable way of reducing risks. The most reliable and foolproof way of reducing a physical risk is to have a purposely built physical gap or physical barrier placed between the person and the risk. Contact anyone in the safety area for verification of that."

In the case of contraception, I completely disagree. Unless you calling "physical barrier" a condom.

"Abortion clinics have done minimal towards reducing the abortion rate, and Marie Stopes is not a completely non-profit organisation, as the doctors, nurses, anesthetists etc are being paid, and most of that pay comes from the taxpayer's pocket."

Marie Stopes provides comprehensive information about contraception and contraception itself. Its services are excellent. Non-profit does not mean the staff don't get paid, it means the company does not seek to make profits for the benefit of private shareholders. Marie Stopes is completely non-profit.

"The record keeping and general research being carried out into abortion is probably the worst of any medical research being carried out in Australia..."

On what do you base this claim?

Col,
Heeeheee glad that you enjoyed SW’s post, too.
Veronika and her article answered your question about encouragement well.

HRS,
Sex-ed is age appropriate, quality information. You seem to gain great joy from deliberately cultivating erroneous concepts about sex-ed merely because you’re paranoid about feminist conspiracies.

Re wasting taxpayers’ money on sex-ed; abortions, counselling, treating STIs and especially having an unplanned child costs taxpayers extra money, too.

Beware of the Authoritative man about the house!
What a patriarchic approach!
My son, for the first time, went on a week holiday with 3 friends from school- all of them girls. His male friend had to drop out at the last minute. My husband and I fully trust him, so do the parents of these girls. I’m glad that my son wasn’t approached in such authoritative fashion by one of the girl’s fathers.

Child abuse?
Sex-ed helps children to be less vulnerable because they learn to respect their own and other people’s body and space and they learn what is appropriate behaviour or not.
They can therefore sooner identify inappropriate behaviour by adults and know where to go for help if they feel that someone threatens to intrude their personal safety zone.
Often, child sexual abuse happens gradually, by someone the child knows, rather than a one-off unexpected rape. If children don’t know their right about their own space and privacy, they cannot defend it.
So, instructing children about the facts of life including their body, their space, is not at all child abuse, on the contrary!

I’m quite curious to know what exactly you find abusive about sex-ed.
Is it… learning about menstruation? …the reproductive system?…hearing the proper names for their body parts?
Do you agree with the Exclusive Brethren who, at their schools, tear pages about the reproductive system out of biology books?

“The most reliable and foolproof way of reducing a physical risk is to have a purposely built physical gap or physical barrier placed between the person and the risk.”
Like a condom?

You got your biased info from a site that advocates abstinence.

Veronika,
Marie Stopes appears to be fashion of the week. I’m beginning to think that there could be a connection between Marie Claire and Marie Stopes. Both are designed for the mass consumer and modern woman, and neither will ever mention some type of spirituality.

You say that you are feminist, but you seem to have a very large number of questions. This doesn’t say much for your feminist education.

I can provide lots of links and sources of information to answer your questions, but perhaps it is best that you practice searching for information yourself, and don’t rely on what a feminist tells you to believe in a feminist education class (whether it be a sex education class or any other type of class).

After you have practiced searching for information yourself, and know something about the subject, then I will gladly answer any further questions you may have.

In the meantime, I wouldn’t be placing too much reliance on a condom to guard against unwanted pregnancy or an STD, particularly if Young Stud has left the condom on the dash board of the car, or Mary Jane has kept it in the bottom of her hand bag.

While it may be easy to hop down to the abortion clinic, it is not so easy to overcome an STD, particularly those that are now immune to all forms of treatment.

Celivia,
Out comes the word patriarchal. Everything that does not revolve around abortion or a condom is patriarchal.

Looking at the situation from a purely risk management approach, abstinence places a physical barrier between the person and the risk. Certain groups want abstinence until marriage. That is acceptable, because that is how societies were able to contain STD’s. We don’t know much about societies that practiced the opposite, because they died out so quickly

HRS. You cannot prove your points, so you insult me.

Think I'll leave you to Celivia's intelligent patience.

Veronika, I think I should abort myself from this discussion, too :)

*Celivia rolls her eyes*
HRS,
If you’d received any sex-ed you’d know that it’s emphasised repeatedly that condoms need to be replaced regularly.
While condoms are not 100% reliable it’s less risky to always have fresh condoms on you even if you don’t use them than to insist you won’t need them and be without in the spur of the moment. People are not perfect, especially not teenagers with overactive hormones.
Sex-ed is not about pushing teens to have sex- it tells them how to prevent accidents if they DO. Sex-ed accepts that.

By nature, teenagers especially boys, take more risk than older people; it has biological and neurological reasons. That’s why we see far more young people, especially boys and young men participating in extreme sports than older people and girls.

You think that you know more about feminism than Veronika, but you have no clue about the fact that feminists are not clones of each other and don’t think exactly alike.
I call myself a feminist because for me feminism just means agreeing that women should have equal rights to those of men. Difference in biology should not mean unequal value.
Veronika questions some things about feminism- so what? That only shows that she has an open mind and does not blindly follow some doctrine.
Everybody should have questions about what they believe in- one cannot know everything, we should all be constantly learning in life.

Look, I really don’t mind that people disagree with me in these debates, but at least they should come up with some reasonable arguments.
You are not able to do that, and rather than telling me WHY you don’t agree you come up with the same old same old feminist-conspiracy argument.
*Celivia yawns*.

For that reason I’m so bored out of my mind debating you that I won’t reply to you in this thread anymore.
Perhaps you can be more logical and reasonable on other topics- I’ll have to wait and find out.

*Celivia waves*

Veronika,
It appears that I’ll have to supply information for you.

The hierarchy of controls for reducing risks or hazards is required in nearly all government regulations.

1/ Eliminate the hazard.
2/ Substitute with a lesser hazard.
3/ Use engineering controls to reduce the hazard
4/ Administrative controls such as workplace procedures
5/ Personal Protective Equipment.

http://www.safety.uwa.edu.au/policies/safety_risk_management_procedures__guidance_note

In terms of unwanted pregnancy, STD’s etc: -

“Administrative control” is basically sex education classes.
“Personal Protective Equipment.” is basically a condom.

They are at the bottom of the list (4 and 5) in terms of priority or reliability.

“Eliminate the hazard” is at the top of the list (1), and is basically abstinence.

Any sex education course or abortion clinic that is not recommending the most reliable method of risk control, but instead recommends the least reliable method of risk control would be operating outside of government regulations.

Guess what Marie Stopes does the most?

Celivia,
See above.