Joycelyn Elders Quotes

This quotation is noteworthy as it illustrates political hypocrisy and very loose standards of accuracy. Vitter was a supporter and advocate for the idea of reducing teen age pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. However, this was an idea of religious advocates and not one recommended by public health scientists in the same way. To Vitter and the religious right, Abstinence Education, was to be a complete substitute for all other forms of sex education. They opposed teaching about birth control and safe sex procedures at all. The public health scientists generally argued that these were necessary, and that Abstinence Education would also be useful if it worked. But the early data showed that Abstinence Education did not work very well and was certainly no substitute for the other modalities of sex education. For Vitter, his moralistic advocacy of sexual fidelity, was particularly hypocritical as a few months after this quotation, Vitter was found to be frequenting prostitutes—See {625898}.

In 1877 Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh attempted to publish The Fruits of Philosophy in Britain. It was a book on Birth Control. The two were immediately arrested and charged with publishing an ‘obscene’ book. Gifford was the Public Prosecutor. The authors were convicted and sentenced to 6 months in prison. However, they appealed and were exonerated in the appeal. The case was good for Gifford who went on to become Lord Chancellor of Britain. The trial was a strong motivator for Annie Besant to have a very activist career thereafter.

Many religious fundamentalists saw condom advocacy as basically immoral as people, in their religious view, ought not to be having sex outside of marriage. A number of programs were started where young people were encouraged (and some say pressured) to take vows of abstinence. Instead of just advocating the abstinence programs, some conservatives chose to attack condom programs by publicly telling people that condoms can break and have a failure rate of over 10 percent. Elders and others who did not think abstinence only programs sufficient, then were able to use the evidence which showed that very few condoms failed and comparatively many vows of chastity and abstinence fail much more frequently. Abstinence was always preferable if it worked and because of the polarization of American Society it was very difficult to develop programs which strongly advocated abstinence and also taught condom use in case a particular young person could not avoid a situation where they became sexually active. The 10 percent failure rate is a very misleading statistic. A couple who is sexually active—intercourse once a week—who use a condom always and properly will have about a 2 percent failure rate in an entire year of sex. That is less than 1 25th of one percent chance of failure per act of intercourse. Couples who do not use condoms always and properly will have a 10 percent or more failure rate but that is for the entire year. Per act of intercourse, the failure rate can be as high as one fourth of one percent—and not the one out of 10 chance of failure that condom opponents sometimes state or imply. The important fact is that there is always a chance of failure with a condom but it is relatively small and far smaller than the failure rate of teen agers who take a vow of abstinence. Abstinence, however, is the only perfect way to prevent pregnancy.

Kenyans were dying in droves from AIDS and the abstinence programs had not stemmed the spread of AIDS.