About two and half weeks ago, Lila Rose, the President of Live Action was featured once again on the O’Reilly Factor, hosted by Laura Ingraham. Sally Kohn of Vision Lab served to rebut Lila Rose’s recent expose of Planned Parenthood’s fraudulent claims that Medicaid services would be lost with the defunding of Planned Parenthood Indiana.
I was watching the show late one night in my DC home when Laura Ingraham asked what I saw as the pivotal question of the segment, “Sally, do you think abortion overall has been good for women, women as a whole?”
Sally responded, “You know, I think that women having more choices with what to do with their bodies has been a good thing.”
Gagging on my drink, while listening to her response, I could not help but do my very best Bill O’Reilly impression at her answer, “More choices of what to do with their bodies has been a good thing for women? Really Sally? Really? Come on.”
Having studied issues regarding abortion and human sexuality the last ten years of my life, I could not help but wonder where Sally and many of her liberal allies could agree to such an inane comment. For the sake of the argument let’s take abortion out for now and focus on other serious consequences which Planned Parenthood’s agenda has brought forth.
The matter at hand is rampant promiscuity which has pervaded youth and young adults and left them scarred by STD’s, emotional trauma, and the reality of single parenthood. While it is always noble to carry a pregnancy to term, single parenthood is no doubt very taxing and difficult.
Sexually Transmitted Diseases have reached epidemic levels the world has never seen before.
Chlamydia, also known as the silent sterilizer because its symptoms are very hard to detect, has seen its rates of incidence rise since 2008. The most recent statistics given by the CDC state that in 2009, the total cases exceeded 1.2 million infections reported throughout the continental United States and the District of Columbia. The cases of infection roses by 2.8 percent from 398.1 in 2008 to 409.2 cases per every 100,000 in the population. It should also be pointed out that the cases among women are three times that of men.
The Human Papilloma Virus better known as HPV causes cervical cancer and has infected 26.8 percent of women ages 14-59. The occurrence of HPV by age group is 35% of 14-19 year olds, 29% of 20-29 year olds, 13% of those age 30-39, 11% of 40-49 year olds, and 6.3% of those ages 50-65. Is this what women had always dreamed that reproductive freedom would give them?
Gonorrhea is difficult to detect in women due to symptoms that are not easily identifiable. The rate of cases of gonorrhea among women is 105.5 cases per 100,000 women.
Eight out of ten people who have an STD are no aware they are infected.[i] It was also pointed out in one study that three-fourths of men admitted to sleeping with women knowing they were infected with an STD, and they refused to make the women aware of it.[ii]
Aside from STD’s infecting women and inhibiting their fertility, numerous other women who have never contracted an STD or had an abortion, have suffered the painful and in many cases overbearing emotional consequences from premarital sexual activity.
Crystalina Evert, a world renowned Chastity Speaker along with her husband Jason Evert says of her previous sexually active high school relationships, “After I lost my virginity, I didn’t respect myself and one empty relationship led to another. Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted the perfect love, but after all I had done I thought I was the last person on earth to deserve it.”[iii]
Another woman, Jillian, recalls that when she was single she was captivated by the challenge of seducing numerous men into having sex with her, “’I didn’t care about love; I just wanted to use men.’ She admitted. But now that she is no longer in pursuit of a sexual conquest and is married to a husband she loves, her desire has diminished. She’s disappointed and confused.” Reproductive freedom allows promiscuity to take place, and it also allows our past sexual experiences to follow us into the marriage bed and continually haunt us there.[iv]
One young lady remarks, “Premarital sex gave me fear as a gift…and shame to wear as a garment. It stole my peace of mind and robbed me of hope in a bright future. Sex smashed my concentration in class to smithereens. Sex gave me a jagged tear in my heart that even now, seven years later, is still healing.”[v]
A former actress says that, “I slept with many, many people trying to find love, to find self-worth. And the more people I slept with, the less self-worth I had.”[vi]
A third and final consequence is single parenthood which has impacted many, many women and thrust them into great difficulty in caring for their children as well as attending to their other responsibilities.
One close friend of mine from high school, who was sleeping with her now ex-boyfriend, became pregnant by him. She chose to bring the child to term and to keep him as her son. As much as she enjoys being a mother and having the treasure of her life by her side everyday she once remarked to me in private, “All these kids who are having casual sex, I want to talk to them James. I want to tell them I was once like you, casual, care-free, non-nonchalant, and now I am a single parent. Make no mistake, I love my baby boy but I can tell you it is not always fun being a single mom either.”
I can recall watching an episode of the most recent season of The Bachelor where Emily Maynard, a single mom, was one of the final contestants to win Brad Womack’s marriage proposal. Emily asked him very poignantly whether or not he was ready to become a father. She told him, “Being a parent isn’t always fun. Getting up in the middle of the night to take care of my daughter when she is sick is not always convenient.”
As much as Sally Kohn and Planned Parenthood would want us to believe that it is healthy for women to have multiple options with what to do with their bodies, the evidence and mere logic points in the opposite direction. Reproductive choices are only good insofar as they respect a woman as a person and not as a mere sex object. Choices which trample the dignity of women and leave them vulnerable to STD’s, heartbreak, emotional trauma, and financial strain, which is often accompanied by single parenthood, are inherently not a good thing and do not respect the women’s dignity or the goodness of her body. Love is the only choice which respects women, protects them from heartbreak, poverty, trauma, STD’s, and it is what women truly deserve.
[i] Evert, Crystalina. Pure Womanhood. San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2007 p. 35
[ii] Evert, Crystalina. Pure Womanhood. San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2007 p. 35
[iii] Evert, Jason. Pure Love. San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2003 4th Edition Page 11
[iv] Wilson, Barbara. Kiss Me Again. Restoring Intimacy Lost in Marriage. Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2009 p. 12
[v] Day, Dick and Josh McDowell. Why Wait? What You Need to Know About the Teen Sexuality Crisis. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, 1987 p. 12
[vi] Day, Dick and Josh McDowell. Why Wait? What You Need to Know About the Teen Sexuality Crisis. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, 1987 p. 123
