Protection Failure Quotes
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.
In the latter years of the 20th century and into the 21st, United Nations peacekeepers had a woeful record of refusing to fight to defend the lives of captured civilians. From the Balkans to Africa thousands of civilians were massacred while United Nations peacekeepers did not interfere. Many physicians whose instincts were against violence were so frustrated by the cowardice and ineptness of UN peacekeepers that armed civilian resistance to armies was preferable.
