Free Birth Control: There may be Pros but don’t Discount the Cons

Rachel Allison

This week I received an email from a good friend. Among other news, she wrote that she had gone to pick up her birth control pills and was told, “No Charge.”

My first thought? “It has begun! Unrestricted sex for everyone!

With her email she sent a link to an article  entitled  “Free Birth Control Means Drastic Drops in Unplanned Pregnancies.” The article triumphantly touts that  “the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions didn’t just go down, they plummeted.” This was the result of a study that was done between 2007 and 2011.

“Birth control was offered to more than 9,000 St. Louis teens and adults who were also educated about their options. The study subjects were aged 14 to 45…. All were considered at risk of unplanned pregnancies and were willing to try a new birth control method.”

Results?…”Drum roll: The free birth control program reduced unplanned pregnancies substantially and cut the abortion rate by 62  to 78 percent over the national rate…

The results were published online recently in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology. They found that from 2008 to 2010, the abortion rate ranged from 4.4 to 7.5 for every 1,000 women. For 2008 (the last year calculated) the national abortion rate was 19.6 per 1,000 women.”

“The birth rate among the girls aged 15 to 19 in the study was 6.3 per 1,000. That’s far below the U.S. rate of 34.3 for every 1,000 girls of that age range.”

The article was a “feel good” read.  We should cheer the results and expect no less from Obamacare’s free birth control mandate.

However, I hit reply to my friend’s email and sent her an article of my own that I’m sure dashed her jubilation to pieces. It’s title, “24,000 U.S. Women Become Infertile Every Year From Undiagnosed STIs”  tells in part the disheartening results of unabated sexual freedom.

 “Many tend to think of HIV or maybe syphilis as the serious one. But gonorrhea and chlamydia can and do cause a lot of infertility. Twenty-four thousand women in the U.S. become infertile every year as a result of undiagnosed STIs according to the same CDC data. Most women who have chlamydia or gonorrhea have no symptoms, which make awareness and access to screening especially important. We’re still catching so few of the cases. Among 15-24 year-olds infected with Gonorrhea only 200,000 of the estimated 570,000 who have the infection are diagnosed and treated.

Chlamydia:  Only 1 million of the  estimated 1.8 million are diagnosed and treated.

After I sent the email I remembered an interview I read recently touting a book written by Ms. Donna Freitas entitled, “The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy.” According to the author students have come to realize that even though “hook ups” are supposed to symbolize the modern mind set,  “Don’t get attached,” many students are finding that it is almost impossible to “walk away emotionally unscathed and not caring.”  They’re just not good at it.  I haven’t read the book, but Ms. Freitas claims that it is the males who are being hurt.  I will have to read her book to figure out her reasoning.

Dr. Miriam Grossman’s book entitled “Unprotected” which I have read sights the opposite.  It is the young women whose lives are being robbed of the normalcy that accompanies healthy, loving, and loyal relationships.

After reading “Unprotected” I had a knot in my stomach that made me physically sick.

This sexual freedom that is supposedly liberating both male and female from “all consequences” is a big lie.  The men involved may be dealing with concern and regret, but it is the women who are being hurt…wounded…damaged…injured…I can’t find a strong enough word that describes the consequences to a woman having sex with multiple partners.  Over time the giving of herself, and then the rejection that follows will destroy a woman…if not physically, then emotionally.

Katie Collins, Research Assistant to Dr. Grossman wrote, “Our culture does not properly honor sexual intimacy, and the cost is the health and hearts of countless young people.”

Sex without consequences is one of the biggest lies being disseminated across this country.  Free contraceptives may reduce unwanted babies from becoming the victims of this sex-crazed society, but young women of caliber are being broken, confused, misled and defeated.  That is a travesty in this world of “caring” and “compassion” and so called “women’s rights.”

Remembering CSW

Rachel Allison

This week is the final week of the “Commission on the Status of Women,” a conference being held at the United Nations in New York City.  United Families International has several volunteers at the UN working to influence pro-life and pro-family language into the outcome documents that will soon become International Law.

As important as this lobbying is, those in our delegation also have opportunity to support women who have come from all over the world to speak to UN delegations concerning their difficult situations at home. Until we hear their stories many of us cannot fathom the situations these good women are experiencing.  In past years I have heard women speak about human slave and sex trafficking.  Their laws and police force do not protect them or their children from such atrocities.   I have heard women talk about watching other women stoned to death without trial or jury.  I have heard women talk about laws that do not protect their 10, 11, and 12 year-old daughters from being bought and subjected to marriage and pregnancy…pregnancy that often causes the unborn baby to die within the womb of the child bride because her body is not mature enough to give birth.

I’m not at CSW (Commission on the Status of Women) this year, but I am trying to read as much as I can about what is happening as they try to direct this year’s focus on eliminating violence against women. I just read an article by someone who is at the conference.  His words brought back vivid memories of needs and concerns that are too often sidelined.

“During the waning days of the conference’s first week and well into this most recent weekend,  I watched and listened as African women discussed and debated the all-important Outcome Document amongst themselves.  Luckily for me, English is their common language and as I sat beside them in the Business Center of our clean but quite modest hotel late into the night on Saturday AND Sunday, I heard their concerns.”

“They are worried about their daughter’s AND son’s education; they want access to potable water in the more remote regions of their respective countries; more doctors, and in keeping with          this year’s conference theme, they want real life-and-death protection for their daughters.”

As I read his article, I was taken back to the years when I attended CSW, and my heart went out to these women who are desperate for help.  I have personally seen women who have to walk miles for potable water.  I have seen the small dark tents where 15+ children huddle to be taught reading and simple arithmetic. I have seen villages whose only “doctor” is a witch doctor who uses the same needle on his patients until it is too dull to be used again.  I have seen mother’s grieve over the loss of a child to dehydration, snakebite, and disease when there was no medicine or help to save.

We who can’t imagine raising a family in such living conditions should count our blessings, and determine that we will give selflessly to strengthen our families, and then support causes that can lift and help the struggling.

Because I have seen what I have seen, and experienced what I have experienced, I cannot, without guilt, spend time on the trivial.  I’m grateful for that guilt.  There are causes too vital not to get involved.  I try to examine my priorities every day. And then I pray like the dickens that my efforts will make a difference.

“Hooking Up”—Is it Really Worth it?

Rachel Allison

Last week I wrote about Hydeia Broadbent, a young woman’s crusade to stop HIV/AIDS.

This week I want to write about some of the “lesser” sexually-transmitted diseases and other problems that are caused by “hooking up.”

There are 19 million new infections of sexually transmitted gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis yearly, which cost $17 billion to treat each year.  But there are others—human papillomavirus, herpes, genital warts, hepatitis, trichomoniasis, and scabies, to name just a few.  The World Health Organization says that there “are more than 30 different sexually transmissible bacteria, viruses and parasites.”  Treatment for those in the United States is also in the billions of dollars per year—that is when they’re treatable and not drug resistant.

Assuming that everyone who is having sex is aware of STDs,  I am quite sure that they don’t understand the consequences that those diseases will bring to their lives.  One woman tells her story when she learned she had Genital Herpes.  I can’t imagine the emotional trauma such a discovery would cause.  As a teenager my doctor told me I had athlete’s foot, and emotionally I felt “dirty” until the creams and ointments cleared up the fungus.

Unfortunately, casual sex is expected by too many, and practically revered by  leftists.  Enter Sandra Fluke publicly demanding that free contraception be given to all sexually-active women. I wonder why someone didn’t argue that the monetary cost of complimentary contraception is miniscule compared with the cost of treating the STD’s that will be transmitted during all that “free” sex.

The facts:

• According to a recent CDC (Center for Disease Control) survey only 60% of high-school students who have had sex used a condom the last time they had intercourse.

50% of HS students say they’ve had sex at least once. (This statistic may be low because many don’t consider oral sex as “sex.”)

• According to the AP article entitled “1 in 4 teen girls has a sexually transmitted disease” not only did 25 percent of teenage girls have an STD, “among those who admitted to having sex, the rate was even more disturbing—40 percent had an STD.”  Black girls suffered worst:  48 percent of them had an STD.

The National Cancer Institute at the National Institute of Health stated that the human papillomavirus, which is “spread through direct skin-to-skin contact during vaginal, anal, and oral sex, causes virtually all cervical cancers and most anal cancers and some vaginal, vulvar, penile, and oropharyngeal cancers (cancers in the middle part of the throat.)” And the risk isn’t limited to women. The title of a 2011 NBCNews.com article adequately sums up the situation:  “Cancer spike, mainly in men, tied to HPV from oral sex.”  The article added that “we can expect some 10,000 to 15,000 patients with the oropharyngeal cancers per year in the United States, with the great majority having HPV-positive (cancers.) “High risk HPV infections account for approximately 5 percent of cancers worldwide.”

According to the CDC, “Chlamydia and gonorrhea are important preventable causes of infertility,” even though “most women infected with Chlamydia or gonorrhea have no symptoms.  There are “an estimated 2.8 million cases of Chlamydia and 718,000 cases of gonorrhea that occur annually in the United States.” Each year untreated STDs cause 24,000 women in the US to become infertile.”  STD’s cause approximately one-fourth of all infertility in women, and treatment to rectify infertility can be very costly.

I won’t elaborate on how STD’s affect babies.  But babies can get the dread disease from their mothers causing stillbirths, low birth weight (less than five pounds), conjunctivitis (eye infection) pneumonia, neonatal sepsis (infection in the baby’s blood stream), neurologic damage, blindness, deafness, acute hepatitis, meningitis, chronic liver disease, and cirrhosis.

STD’s truly are “the gift that keep on giving.”

Again I will ask, “Where is the outcry?”  If there were enough voices outraged by the outright disregard of the issue that is bringing so much emotional and physical pain, death and monetary waste, maybe…just maybe we could help bring this deception to the forefront.

My Thoughts on our Sexual State of Affairs

Allison Malnar

I read an article yesterday that cited Bill Clinton’s State of the Union Address from January 1994.  He stated,  ”In ten years, one-half of all children born in America will be illegitimate.” I was shocked!   I have been on the computer for over an hour trying to find out how many children are now born to unwed mothers in the United States. According to the National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 60, Number 1, November 3, 2011, the number of overall births is decreasing, while the number of illegitimate births is increasing.

Clinton’s State of the Union Address coupled with an observation I had last week at my children’s swimming lessons prompted the writing of this blog.  I watched a very cute little girl get dropped off by her father and met at the swim lesson by her mother. The man and the woman spoke very little. The woman had just come from work. I could tell that they both adored the little girl but not each other. I thought how different my life would be if I were on my own with my children. I would have to work and I would be entrusting my children’s wellbeing to strangers.

I have several friends who are single mothers. Some are single because husbands have left, and some because they chose to have sexual relations outside of marriage. One friend was dating a man and “they were in love” until she got pregnant. Then, he was gone. She is no longer pregnant but she never had the baby. This friend and her former lover no longer speak.

I waited until I was married to have sex. I did have a few serious relationships where my boyfriends really tried to pressure me to have sexual relations with them.  I am so grateful I did not give in to them or the moment. Years later, I can see what my parents were trying to tell me back then. When you only have sexual relations within marriage, it is difficult to imagine having sex casually. The big secret of marital sex is if the relationship is good—both partners committed and caring of the other, the sex gets better and better. No casual affair can compare with the committed wonderful marriage relationship. How can I say this while not having experienced the former? Observation and seeing the consequences of both types of relationships is telling.

Last week, my children crawled in bed with me and we laughed and talked and read books for over an hour. I thought, “This is heaven on earth.” Later that day, my kids ran to my husband yelling, “Daddy!” I followed them with a kiss for my husband. Why am I writing about my perfect life? (It is not always perfect but I have never wanted to trade with anyone.) Because I believe the big lie of today is perpetuated by adults that have never experienced the type of relationship I am describing. There are wonderful and honorable men and women in society that still believe in traditional values. And while you have to place more restrictions on yourself before marriage, it leads to greater freedom after marriage.

Who Has the Moral High Ground?

Melissa Anderson

I put much of my past focus on the pro abortion campaign of the United States. However, the organization I write for is United Families International. We focus on family everywhere in the world, attempting to raise awareness to the degradation of the family and the means we have to strengthen our own corners of the world. Lift where you stand, wherever you stand.

I’d like to turn our attention for a moment to China. China has been in the news recently after a picture surfaced of a woman lying next to her seven-month gestation preborn infant after she had undergone a forced abortion. (Warning! you can see it here, but extremely graphic!) The Chinese government has attempted to apologize and make amends for this atrocity, but only because the photo has garnered world-wide attention and outrage. This is only one of several well-known cases occurring over the decades since the one-child policy was put in place. Carnage committed in the name of population control.

Some time ago, my husband traveled to China on a study abroad trip in college. While exploring the Great Wall of China, he met a woman selling raincoats. As my husband was becoming fluent in Mandarin Chinese, he was eager to speak to the woman. She told him about her children. She had three. She related that after having her first child, a son, she felt the desperate desire to have more children. She lived in the city at the time and the one-child policy was strictly enforced in the city. This woman and her husband sold everything they owned and moved away from family in the city, to start a poor life in the squalor of the country. They wanted one thing: a baby. They hoped that the Chinese government would grant them a waiver to have another child if they farmed in the country. Their hopes were realized twice. The woman selling raincoats was granted a waiver, and then another after that. For her three children she gave away all she possessed in the world. She had ten minutes to tell a young American student the most important thing in her life, and she reveled in the three children her country had allowed her to have.

In many areas of China, the government is very strict in enforcing the one-child policy. They are so strict that officials force abortions on women found in violation of the policy. Women in China are forced to hide subsequent pregnancies from authorities and pay exorbitant fines to the government when they attempt to keep a child conceived in violation of the one-child policy. When the pregnancies are discovered, government officials have the authority to tie the woman down, still fighting, and force an abortion and sterilization. Chinese forced abortions are not new and are certainly not unknown to the international community who tends to look the other way.

The reality is appalling.

I always like to remind people to take a hard look at ourselves before we look for the faults in other people or other communities.

In many western countries, women flock to abortion clinics, demand states pay for their abortions with taxpayer funds, swear these funds aren’t being used for abortions while finding legal loopholes to pass the bill of the preborn dead onto people who neither condone nor tolerate the conduct.

So I ask you, who is worse, the lawmaker who openly forces an abortion, or the lawmaker who promotes abortion policy or sells his convictions to the highest bidder?

Which is worse, the mother breaking a law to carry a child and then being tied down while her preborn infant is killed, or the woman asking, paying, for someone to put an end to the life of her pre-born child?

While Chinese women fight for the right to keep their children, we fight for a right to kill ours.

Which is worse? Which community has the highest need for moral introspection and reflection?

I ask that we band together to stand with the women of China who desire to keep their babies. Stand with the women willing to sell all they possess for the chance at having another child. Stand with the women who courageously fight to have a family.

The Chinese Ambassador to the United States is Zhang Yesui. Email Ambassador Zhang at chinaembpress_us@mfa.gov.cn and kindly, politely, respectfully, voice your personal concern.

Urge change. Then get involved in changing laws and stopping the abortion industry in your own state and country.

Melissa Anderson is a lawyer in San Antonio, Texas. She is the mother of seven crazily adorable children and an author of children’s books. In her spare time, Melissa volunteers extensively with Court Appointed Special Advocates educating the community on issues related to child abuse and neglect.

 

 

Pro-family Victory! vs. “the longest suicide note in history…”

The media will tell you that the Rio +20 Sustainable Environment Conference began on Wednesday, June 20, with world leaders converging on Rio de Rio de Janeiro, but for the pro-family world the drama ended in the days prior. It ended with the completion of the outcome document entitled “The Future We Want” – a document that the radical environmental group, Greenpeace, is calling the “longest suicide note in history.” This 49-page document has disappointed and even outraged our opposition while energizing the pro-family/pro-life effort.

A colleague at Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, Tim Hermann, gives this overview:

In an astounding show of solidarity, a diverse group of countries rallied together with the Holy See to successfully remove any mention of reproductive rights or population control from the final outcome document produced during the last round of UN negotiations at the Rio +20 conference this week.

For the past six months, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) along with Norway and Iceland, and Catholics for Choice and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, have worked feverishly to take advantage of the Rio +20 conference on sustainable development in order to promote both an international right to abortion and population control.

We are happy to report that they were unsuccessful! Population control language with its new iteration of “population dynamics” was eliminated and the language of sexual and reproductive rights made no advances. Those who sought to reconfigure the way wealth is distributed were stymied and the green economy/global warming crowd saw an outcome document that was by their estimation so watered down and ineffectual that the Executive Director of Greenpeace tweeted: “This is Rio Minus 20 which Fails on equity, fails on ecology, fails on economy – text [is]longest suicide note in history…”

Robert Engelman, Worldwatch Institute, lamented:

 ”At a time when scientists are calling attention to the real possibility that humanity is pushing the planet to a “state shift”—-a point in which conditions for human and non-human life could quickly and dramatically deteriorate—-there is no concrete action called for that is remotely commensurate to this real risk.”

Headlines like: “Rio+20 Agreement Fails Women, and the World and “Progress on Earth Issues too Slow,” speak to the frustration of those who had hoped this conference would give a much-needed boost to the stalled out environmental movement.

So what’s Rio +20 all about?

This highly-publicized event is the 20-year follow up to the Earth Summit (1992) when environmental activists gathered in Rio to create an agenda for the “greening” of the international community and to create a world of true environmental and social sustainability.

The Rio Declaration and Principles, along with Agenda 21 (the “21″ being a reference to the 21^st Century) has been praised as the “comprehensive blueprint of action to be taken globally, nationally, and locally by organizations of the UN, governments, and major groups in every area in which humans directly affect the environment.” And, it has also been blasted as “a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control.”

Environmentalism & the Anti-Family Agenda

Although we at UFI are proponents of wise stewardship and care of the planet, we must point out that the environmental movement has provided a foundation, credibility, and impetus to an anti-family agenda. If you believed that there were too many people on the earth and the planet was being harmed, you would support population control. Population control would include the pushing of contraception, sterilization, and abortion would fit nicely in that package.

This mindset has spawned the belief that countries cannot develop unless they limit their population growth opening the door to large amounts of international development money being funneled into abortion advocate’s coffers where they use that money to promote “sexual and reproductive rights,” radical feminism, alternative forms of families, early sexualization of young people (as long as all forms of contraception and legalized abortion are readily available), and LGBT rights – even homosexual behavior is advantageous when a major goal is to limit the number of people being born.

Factors that led to a successful pro-family outcome

1. The environmental movement as a whole has been dealt a series of blows with the failure of international meetings like the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, global climate change research scandals, failure of “green” companies, a global recession, and a growing public skepticism to the message of impending environmental doom.

2. In the international community there are concerns on the part of the developing world that if they accept the developed world’s ideology and push for sustainable development that these so-called “sustainable practices” will not only be prohibitively expensive, but that their ability to grow their economies will be severely limited. During the negotiations, delegations from the developed world were more interested in pushing for investment from the north and in setting up the technology transfers that would aid their individual economies than in discussing a path towards a “green energy revolution.”

3. Countries are simply not as gullible as they were during the first Rio back in 1992. There is no longer a lock-step belief that the best way to keep the earth “green” and to grow healthy economies is to get rid of people. Stefano Gennarini, C-Fam, explains it this way:

“Twenty years ago many developing countries did not question the science and desirability behind population control policies. Today, developing countries are more weary of mentions of population dynamics, population reduction or stabilization and similar verbiage. Countries now know that population woes are grossly overstated, and are even fearful of being subjected to the same economic fate as European countries if they adopt population control as a policy. In addition, the racial motivation at the origins of population policies still alarm developing countries.”

4. An amazing and dedicated group of pro-life/pro-family leaders have been there to shore up and educate family-supportive delegations during the long negotiating sessions (scattered over the last six months) all leading up to the formal 3-day Rio+20 Conference. A special “thank you” to the Holy See Delegation for their dedication to life and to the family; for their courage in speaking out and taking the lead under very difficult circumstances.

We are grateful to be able to report to you that all these factors were able to combine this last week – protecting the future of the family and saving the lives of unborn children around the world. This is the goal and objective of all UFI’s involvement at the United Nations. It is our hope that a respect for the environment and the planet on which we all live, can combine with the over arching respect for human life. They are not mutually exclusive and both deserve our best efforts.

Sincerely,

Carol Soelberg
President, United Families International

 Don’t forget to check out:

www.WorldFamilyNews.com

 

It’s about Demography, Stupid!

Here’s a very readable and effective chart that shows that the world is actually in population decline as based on the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of countries.   Note that a 2.1 TFR is required for replacement – statistically,  a man and woman need to have 2.1 children in order to replace themselves.  Anything below that rate a country moves into population decline.

We have commented before on absolute population numbers which show that the world’s population is still growing.  That is because of “population momentum.”  For an explanation of population momentum, go here.

-In 2010, 48 percent of countries of the world had below replacement fertility rates,

-by the year 2050,  that number will increase to 78 percent,

-and by the year 2100, it is safely projected that 82 percent of the world will have below replacement fertility. 

Seventy-eight percent by the year 2050!  To understand the significance of these numbers, recognize that a country with a  Total Fertility Rate of  1.4  will lose one-third of its population every generation.  There are 34 countries that are already there.

What happens to a country, its economy, its social protection programs, etc. with that kind of decline?   This should sober us all up – even the most dedicated environmentalist and population control advocates.  As environmentalists like to say, our current way of life will be “simply unsustainable.”

World Population Prospects, the 2010 Revision

Figure 8: Population by Total Fertility (millions)

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2011): World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision. New York
Note: Only countries with a population of 100,000 or more in 2010 are included

(Updated: 15 April 2011)

What happened at the UN conference on women?

Carol Soelberg

What do phrases like “gender transformers,” “comprehensive sex education,” or endless references to “contraceptive commodities” have to do with a priority theme of: “The empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication?“  Those are the questions that our UFI team asked themselves for the last two weeks (Feb. 27-March 9) as they engaged in the spectacle known as the UN “Commission on the Status of Women” (CSW).

Most of the world’s poor do live in rural areas and most of the poor are women.  All steps that actually do work in regarding to alleviating their economic plight should be welcomed. But once again, CSW did not stay true to its stated agenda and our United Families team in New York had their hands full trying to stop an obvious anti-family agenda from gaining ground.

There were at least six draft resolutions, three of which dealt most directly with pro-family issues.  Our UFI team followed them very closely and worked with delegates on the various resolutions to not only keep out the bad stuff, but to include some very positive language on family, parental rights, and the importance of religious and cultural values of each member state.  The negotiations included:

1)  A resolution on the empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication (Agreed Conclusions)
2) A resolution on eliminating maternal mortality & morbidity
3) A resolution on women, the girl child and HIV and AIDS

Gender, gender, gender….

During the negotiations on the priority theme resolution, a suggestion to include a positive reference to “wives and mothers” and a reference to the “vital role of the family in society” met with stiff resistance while the same resolution included 15 references to “gender” (gender mainstreaming, gender sensitive, gender dimensions, gender equality, gender perspective, gender inequality, gender-stereotypes, gender transformers, and on and on).  The resolution on maternal mortality at one point had 18 similar references to “gender”, and the HIV resolution had 29!

This alone serves as a reminder that the UN as a whole and the Commission on the Status of Women in particular is focused on the promotion of radical feminism and that the intentional overuse of “gender” also lays the framework for the promotion of the idea that a person’s gender is “fluid”- tying it directly to the homosexual agenda.  Even though in prior UN documents, the definition of “gender” has been clarified as meaning male or female, the United States, the European Union, Canada, and their anti-family allies refused to allow that definition to be added to any of the current resolutions.  That speaks volumes.

Comprehensive Sex Education

What does “Comprehensive Sex Education” have to do with reducing the number of women who will die during childbirth because of lack of pre-natal and post-natal medical care and the presence of skilled birth attendants during delivery?   We wondered that also as the U.S. and E.U. delegations insisted that that phrase remain in the resolution on reducing maternal mortality.  The U.S. delegation then shut down any effort to immediately qualify the phrase with the addition of consensus parental rights language such as: “recognizing the rights, duties, and responsibilities of parents to direct the education of their children.”

Later at a U.S. Briefing, Laurie Phipps, a senior negotiator for the U.S. State Department, gave us the reason for the push.  Phipps stated:  “Here at CSW, we are taking the opportunity to talk about Comprehensive Sex Education because that is something that is a priority for the U.S. government…”  When the briefing ended Laurie Phipps privately acknowledged to an associate that she had “rambled too much” during the briefing and that she was “going to be in trouble” for her statements and that what she had said “would probably end up all over the internet.”   We are working to make sure Laurie’s prediction comes true and we want to warn you about the inclusion of the adjective “comprehensive” before sex education.

What exactly is “Comprehensive Sex Education?”  The shortest answer is probably this:  Comprehensive Sex Education is pornography for children.  Those who promote it are seeking to change society by changing sexual and gender norms and that includes training young people to advocate for “sexual rights.”  The pro-family coalition actively worked against the U.S. delegation who repeatedly tried to strong-arm and deceive the other delegations into including the phrase “Comprehensive Sex Education.”  It was our task to inform and convince these countries of what they would be signing on to if that language were included.  To see an explanation of what is included in “Comprehensive Sex Ed” programs go here.  (warning:  contains graphic content)   

Contraception, contraception and more contraception

To the amazement of some long-time UN observers, the delegates from the U.S. attempted to insert “access to contraceptives” at every opportunity – at one point inserting it so many times in the proposed resolution on HIV/AIDS that the representative of the Holy See wryly asked:  “Are we trying to prevent births or HIV?  Contraceptives are for the purpose of preventing conception – not preventing the transmission of HIV.”

It became increasingly clear that the pushing of so much “contraceptive” language may well be an attempt to shore up the Obama administration’s highly controversial “contraception mandate” by inserting it into international documents in an attempt to justify it not only to citizens of the U.S., but to the rest of the world.  

Sexual and reproductive health rights and services

It seems no UN conference document or resolution would be complete without the repeated attempts to establish a global “right to abortion” with the ubiquitous inclusion of phrases like “reproductive health services” and “sexual and reproductive rights.”  Once again you will see different versions of these phrases inserted multiples of times in the same resolution while sentences and paragraphs promoting true health care for women are conspicuously absent.
This is a battle that UFI representatives and their pro-family allies fight virtually every UN commission and conference.

An opportunity to showcase real success

This Commission on the Status of Women did give United Families International an opportunity to showcase “Best Practices for Alleviating Poverty of Rural Women and Their Families.”  UFI joined with our colleagues at Reach the Children, The Howard Center, and Care for Life for a “parallel event” where we highlighted the Stay Alive Program (HIV prevention program), Care for Life’s “Family Preservation Program,” sustainable agriculture projects in Kenya, and poverty reduction programs in China.  Many individuals who attended the event commented that it was remarkable to hear about real and effective programs – programs that are actually helping women, children, and their families instead of dealing with the mostly empty rhetoric that is the stock and trade of the UN system.  Thanks to all who helped with this exceptional presentation.

In the end…

After 2+ weeks of pouring over resolutions, inserting and deleting language, monitoring negotiations, and working closely with delegates, we have some good things to report and a not so good thing.  The U.S. sponsored resolution on maternal mortality and morbidity was adopted last Friday – in spite of countless hours of work on the part of the UFI team and other pro-family groups to strip it of some very anti-life and anti-family language.  We will be doing “damage control” from this resolution for years to come.  We found we couldn’t compete effectively with the lack of transparency of the closed negotiations (mostly held within the U.S. Mission complex) and the less-than-honest manipulations of a highly-aggressive U.S. delegation.

On the good news side of the ledger, the resolution on the HIV was “tabled” with a possibility of the topic being revisited next year.   The negotiation of the resolution on rural women and poverty eradication (also referred to as “Agreed Conclusions”) had not been completed by last Friday’s deadline and was continuing into this week.   As of a few hours ago, negotiations ended and this resolution also failed to reach consensus.  A few sources are laying the failure at the feet of the U.S. delegation that refused to budge off their agenda of pushing things like “sexual and reproductive health rights” and “comprehensive sex ed” language.

Although possibly harmful to careers of UN diplomats, for those in the pro-life/pro-family world, the failure of the negotiating delegations to reach agreement on a resolution is not a bad ending.  We express gratitude to those brave delegates who stood firm and refused to bow to the pressure from the anti-family delegations from the European Union, Canada, Australia, U.S. and from a couple of Latin America countries (list is certainly not exhaustive).

We thank our UFI team (Kelli Houghton, Diana Lacey, Esme Weathers, Marcia Barlow, and Mike Lacey) and all of you who generously support our efforts.  We do it for you and can’t do it without you. Together we will continue to secure a future for the family.

Week-long Sex Strike? Really?

Rachel Allison

Townhall’s political editor, Guy Benson’s article caught my attention with the shocking title:  Liberal Women Plan “Sex Strike” to Protest Nonexistent Contraception Ban.

“Liberal Ladies Who Lunch” is the organization who is calling for the “Sex Strike.”

Quotes by “Liberal Ladies Who Lunch:”

“If our reproductive rights are denied, so are yours.”

“…if we lose our hard won rights to medical care, birth control and pregnancy choice, it won’t only affect women. Men will have to…go back to the days when they waited for or paid for sex.”

There are several things that bother me about the statements made by Liberal Ladies.

1.  A “Sex Strike” for a week?  Seven days without sex makes a statement?   It’s almost laughable.  Are these women afraid of losing their significant other if they hold out longer than a week?

2.  I would hope that there are women in the world who recognize the personal responsibility that accompanies adult decisions.  And unless a woman is raped, there is a decision involved when it comes to sex.

3.  “The health of the woman” is the statement we hear over and over and over again.  True Statement: “A healthy woman is able to conceive and bear children.”

Contraceptives and abortifacents prevent normal fertility of the woman and continued existence of newly conceived life in the womb.  Contraceptives and abortifacents are not designed to promote health.  They are designed to take consequences out of the decision to engage in sex.

4.  Sandra Fluke’s testimony doesn’t make sense to those of us who have used or are using contraceptives.  They just aren’t that expensive. And it’s all a matter of priority.  If there is very little money and if sex is a priority don’t stop at the neighborhood Starbucks. Pay for your own contraception. This entitlement mentality needs to change.  “I want ______ so you pay for it.  Where did that thinking come from?

5. With all the real heartbreak and need in the world why are we focusing our time and attention on sex? Has our society become so sex driven and self absorbed that we can’t seem to focus on loftier causes? I am a woman.  I enjoy sex with my husband. But sex is a balanced part of my life. I have books to read, projects to finish, travels to enjoy, service to give, beauty to experience, babies to hold, friends to help.  In other words, my life is rich and full and wonderful. I make it that way.

My advice to “Liberal Ladies Who Lunch:” Focus on loftier causes.  Your lives and those you love will become so much more rewarding.

“Down not Up”?

When Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took questions from the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health about President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal last Thursday, she commented that a reduction in the number of human beings born in the United States will compensate employers and insurers for the cost of complying with the new HHS mandate. The mandate will require all health-care plans to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.

“The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception,” Sebelius said. She went on to say the estimated cost is “down not up.”

I have a few questions for Sebelius. If supplying contraceptives for “free” is really the most cost effective way of handling women’s health care, then why haven’t insurance companies picked up on this before?

Why is the United States government concerned about population growth when the birth rate in the United States is at its lowest?

And what about 30 years from now when there are fewer working tax payers then there are elderly people whose health care costs are typically the highest among the population– will fewer babies being born today help health care costs in the future? I doubt it. Parts of Europe and Japan are now finding out that an aging demographic actually creates economic challenges rather than solves them.