Promoting Abstinence "proven to work"

[kanageddaamen]

MrBubbles said:
abstinence only education can be especially dangerous because it more often than not tends towards a heavy religious influence which will teach the children that their natural impulses are wrong and immoral. you have these children who grow up hating themselves because of such abuse.

This.  It can be particularly damaging if they follow through on the impulses, then feel as if they are somehow a bad person.  The worst are hardline catholics that teach that any orgasmic act outside of marital sex with the intention or willingness to have a baby is evil.  Then these poor kids think even masturbation (something nearly every human on the planet does after the age 13 or so) is paramount to murder.

A brief history of why the church takes this stance.  The thought on procreation used to be that the man's "seed" was just that, an actual human life, and  that the woman was just an oven in which the baby developed and grew.  This is why the early church was against any such acts, as they thought you were literally killing a person if you had an orgasmic act without the intention or willingness to have a child.  Obviously this is wrong, and a school? of sperm can no way be thought of as a human life, but the church has never been an organization to embrace scientific fact.

I think the following message is what is healthiest, most appropriate, and most effective at preventing teen pregnancy and STD transmission (again, you will NEVER prevent teen sex):

The urges you have are healthy, normal, and in no way immoral
Sex carries risks, such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases which can forever alter your life
The only way to be 100% safe is to not have sex (masturbation is fine)
IF you are going to act on your urges, protect yourself with an effective form of birth control, and ideally 2.