If you lower the cost of things, people will buy more of it…. [I]f you lower the cost of uncommitted sexual encounters, you completely dissociate sex from pregnancy and birth and a lifetime of child care. People will engage in more uncommitted sexual encounters.
~ George Mason University law professor Helen Alvare, explaining the idea of “risk compensation” – and why she believes more contraception hasn’t led to fewer unintended pregnancies, as quoted by NPR, September 7
Via the BLAZE
I didn’t want the responsibility, I wanted the sex. And so the easy way out was abortion. That’s what I thought. Just pay $300 and the problem goes away…. I thought if you just wanted to have sex just do it, what’s the big deal? I didn’t realize how important sex was – that people die from sex, that people are born from sex, that hearts are broken and kingdoms fall to the ground as the result of sexual immorality. I didn’t know any of that – all I knew was what I wanted.
~Former Broadway star and post-abortive father David MacDonald, LifeSiteNews, May 17
….The Post goes on to report that even though the curriculum includes assignments such as these and refers students to a Columbia University website called “Go Ask Alice” — which details sexual positions, types of sex that don’t include intercourse and more — the Department of Education maintains it is promoting abstinence first.
The Times and the Post both report that parents have the “right” to opt their children out of lessons about contraception methods. An op-ed in The New York Times last week calls this opt-out “very limited” in terms of parental control. The op-ed contributors Robert P. George and Melissa Morchella state that it is undeniable the curriculum is “sexualizing children” a younger and younger ages and that mandates such as this “violate parents’ rights”:
But no one can plausibly claim that teaching middle-schoolers about mutual masturbation is “neutral” between competing views of morality; the idea of “value free” sex education was exploded as a myth long ago. The effect of such lessons is as much to promote a certain sexual ideology among the young as it is to protect their health.
But beyond rival moral visions, the new policy raises a deeper issue: Should the government force parents — at least those not rich enough to afford private schooling — to send their children to classes that may contradict their moral and religious values on matters of intimacy and personal conduct?
[…]
Unless a broader parental opt out is added, New York City’s new policies will continue to usurp parents’ just (and constitutionally recognized) authority. Turning a classroom into a mandatory catechism lesson for a contested ideology is a serious violation of parental rights, and citizens of every ideological hue should stand up and oppose it…..