SARAH PALIN AND TEENAGE PREGNANCY

In a recent essay, Amy Schalet, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, writes that “Sarah Palin supports programs that contribute to that environment [one that inhibits teens from making conscious choices about sex and using contraception effectively], favoring policies that prohibit teachers from explaining the benefits of contraception and condoms and that require teaching that sex outside of marriage is unacceptable.”  Schalet argues that America should look to the Netherlands as a healthy model for public discussion about teenage sex, which involves parents, who support, condone and encourage the wide use of contraceptives with their sexually active children.  Because of these policies and practices, she argues, “Dutch teen pregnancy and abortion rates are now among the lowest in the developed world.”  This, Schalet maintains, is the antidote to the unhealthy, “myth-only” approach to adolescent sexuality that Sarah Palin and the Republican Party represent.   

Is Schalet correct?  Her argument about the Netherlands is statistically correct.  But is it ethically correct?  The greatest challenge with teen pregnancy is not that it occurs or that teens are sexually active.  They are sexually active at ever increasing rates; therefore teen pregnancy will result.  The issue is not that parents should be actively engaged in a conversation with their teens about sexuality.  They should.  But the key and fundamental question is one of ethics.  In my Ethics text, I define ethics as that set of duties and obligations established by God.  It is what we ought to do, not what we do.  Ethics focuses on the “oughts” of life, established by our Creator for our good and the good of civilization.  God’s revelation in Scripture could not be clearer.  Sexual activity outside of marriage is not sanctioned by God.  One searches Scripture in vain to see God’s approval of premarital, extramarital or same-sex sexual activity.  In fact, what we see is God sanctioning and blessing the beauty and intimacy of sexual love within the boundaries of marriage.  That is the conversation parents and their children should be having.  

Consider these facts that support abstinence-until-marriage programs:

1. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study in 1997 revealing the factor most strongly associated with a delay in the onset on sexual activity was a pledge to abstinence.
2. The Consortium of State Physicians Resource Councils is an independent group of more than 10,000 physicians dedicated to bringing accuracy into public discussions regarding public health issues.  It recently concluded that “The evidence points to sexual abstinence, not increased contraceptive use, as the primary reason for the decline in teen pregnancy and birthrates throughout the 1990s.”
3. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy recently found that 78% of teens agree that sex outside of marriage is wrong.  Of those surveyed who had already had sex, 55% of boys and 72% of girls wished they had waited.  Teens are receptive to the abstinence message because it reaffirms what they already know to be right (see Romans 2:14-15).  Abstinence-based programs include character and interpersonal relationship education, understanding sex and sexuality, marriage preparedness, refusal skills, STD information and parent-teen communication skills.  In addition, good programs also have mentoring and peer-support networks, the key to any program’s success.

Out of Falls Church, Virginia is an organization called “Reasonable Reasons to Wait.”  This organization itemizes a series of advantages to the choice of abstinence before marriage:

1. Freedom from pregnancy.
2. Freedom from the decision-making which pregnancy involves (e.g., premature parenting, adoption, abortion).
3. Freedom from sexually transmitted diseases.
4. Freedom from the side effects of contraceptives.
5. Freedom from marrying someone too soon or before you are ready.
6. Freedom from unintentional and intentional exploitation.
7. Freedom from guilt, depression, disappointment, worry and rejection.
8. Freedom to be in control of your tomorrow.
9. Freedom to use your energy to accomplish your goals.
10. Freedom to develop a better understanding of your dating relationships.
11. Freedom to respect yourself and others.
12. Freedom to establish greater trust in marriage.
13. Freedom to enjoy being yourself, being a teenager.

American culture is awash in sex and sexual permissiveness.  It should be no surprise, therefore, that our children, including those of prominent national figures, will make unwise choices when it comes to sexual activity.  But this is not an issue of education, nor is it an issue of personal morals.  This is fundamentally an ethical issue.  Ethics is about our duties and obligations to God and to one another.  The sexual ethic of America is one with no boundaries, except the boundary of rape.  That absence of boundaries should not logically lead to a safe-sex ideology, one which Amy Schalet advocates.  God has spoken to this issue and sexual abstinence is and can be presented as a reasonable choice for teens today.  And we can build the mentoring and peer-support network to enhance the instruction in STDs, communication skills for teens, refusal skills and marriage preparedness that should be a part of any worthwhile curriculum anyway.  There are reasonable reasons to wait and those reasons are not found in The Netherlands.  They are found in God’s ethical construct that brings true freedom, not bondage.

See Schalet’s essay in the Washington Post (9 October 2008) and an article that is part of a Sex Ed Program called “Worth The Wait,” led by Matthew R. Porter, M.D. of Waco, Texas.  Dr. Porter serves on the faculty of Texas A&M School of Medicine and serves in the Scott and White Clinic in Waco that published the “Worth The Wait” curriculum.

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