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Post by wdmundt on Jan 2, 2008 19:58:13 GMT -4
Of course abstinence is a cure-all for pregnancy and STDs - but it is not realistic. Some of points A-H are undoubtedly correct, while other points are just moralistic (but not particularly harmful) gobbledygook. What is harmful is leaving out information about human sexuality and contraception.
Your earlier description of what you think sex education should involve (encourage abstinence but tell them what they really need to know) is almost exactly what has been shown to work. Abstinence-only, however, is a farce.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 2, 2008 20:20:03 GMT -4
Abstinence-only education has ramped up massively under President Bush. From the Union of Concerned Scientists: "Since his tenure as governor of Texas, President George W. Bush has made no secret of his view that sex education should teach teenagers “abstinence only” rather than including information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy." ..... "The fact that the Bush administration ignores the scientific evidence, troubling though that is, is not the primary concern of this report. Rather, it is the fact that the Bush administration distorted science-based performance measures to test whether abstinence-only programs were proving effective, such as charting the birth rate of female program participants. In place of such established measures, the Bush administration has required the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to track only participants’ program attendance and attitudes, measures designed to obscure the lack of efficacy of abstinence-only programs." ... "In addition to distorting performance measures, the Bush administration has suppressed other information at odds with its preferred policies. At the behest of higher-ups in the Bush administration, according to a source inside the CDC, the agency was forced to discontinue a project called “Programs that Work,” which identified sex education programs found to be effective in scientific studies. All five of the programs identified in 2002 involved comprehensive sex education for teenagers and none were abstinence-only programs. In ending the project, the CDC removed all information about these programs from its website." www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/abstinenceonly-education.html
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 3, 2008 11:46:40 GMT -4
So? I've already said if that is the position of the government then I have to disagree with it.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 3, 2008 15:24:45 GMT -4
And then you came to the conclusion that President Bush has nothing to do with it, so I felt compelled to set you straight.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 3, 2008 15:30:01 GMT -4
You seemed to be trying to build a case that the government's attitude was the result of President Bush specifically. In fact it predates his administration.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 3, 2008 16:14:45 GMT -4
And it has been embraced wholeheartedly by this administration to the exclusion of actual sex education. That part of the equation does not predate this administration.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 3, 2008 16:48:46 GMT -4
In any case, would you say that we generally agree with what should be taught in sex education programs in the country?
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 3, 2008 17:02:29 GMT -4
Absolutely. And I think we can agree that abortion is not a desirable outcome.
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Post by PeterB on Jan 5, 2008 7:48:25 GMT -4
For what it's worth, I agree pretty much with Gillian's position.
But I thought I'd throw something else into the equation - a chapter from "Freakonomics". The chapter discusses why crime rates dropped in New York after the NYPD adopted a much tougher stance on crime and arresting criminals. About ten reasons were suggested, and the authors discussed why each of them weren't complete answers. By looking at crime statistics across the country, they then came up with what they considered the real reason - crime statistics steadily dropped across the USA about 20 years after Roe v Wade.
The reason they gave was that abortion then became affordable to women at all levels of society. This meant that many more poor women weren't forced to raise unwanted children who had few prospects in life other than crime. A generation later, many potential criminals remained unborn, and thus unable to commit crimes.
It's an ugly story, and obviously many who were aborted wouldn't have grown into criminals, but the arguments the authors present are convincing. In any case, it shows the reality of the human situation. We're not saints, and trying to force morality onto people is not easily done. And having said that, I'm sure that virtually no woman has an abortion without agonising over the decision.
And I don't think that adoption is necessarily a solution - how many unwanted children grew up in boarding schools run by various churches or government agencies? Many more in the past than these days. This suggests there were many more children available for adoption than adults willing to adopt them. And there are copious stories of the appalling treatment these children experienced from those who ran them.
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Post by echnaton on Jan 5, 2008 9:44:39 GMT -4
Levitt is a great economist and "Freakonomics" is a very good read. I'll agree that I found his case on the societal benifits of abortion compelling.
On adoption, may parents go outside the country to adopt because of the short supply of babies. That is new born babies whose mothers have a reasonable health record. Very few people want to take on raising a child from a substance abusing mother. Race also plays a role, as a disproportionate number of children born to unwed mothers are non-white, limiting the pool of healthy adoptable children available to white couples that want a child of the same race.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 5, 2008 16:52:41 GMT -4
So, basically crime dropped because pre-emptive (very pre-emptive) executions became legal? Sorry, but I don't see that as much of an argument in favor of a policy.
My nephew (adopted by my brother and sister-in-law) is non-white. He's actually 3/4 hispanic and 1/4 african american. His parents are talking about adopting again this year, if possible.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 5, 2008 17:05:43 GMT -4
For what it's worth, I agree pretty much with Gillian's position. Thank you. As I think is obvious given my circumstances, I've put an awful lot of thought into the subject. And I, too, read Freakonomics and had to think seriously about my views after reading that chapter. My daughter, I think, was lucky. In a lot of ways. While Gods know I'm not exactly healthy, at least her mom and dad know what to look for. If she does turn out bipolar (and I really, really hope she doesn't), they'll catch the signs when they start showing. They knew to keep an eye out for dyslexia (which runs in both sides of her family), but she seems not to have it. And, yes, I'm white and so are her mom and dad. I'm not sure how much it would have mattered to them--probably not much--and it didn't matter to me, but it does make us part of a certain statistical base, and to ignore that would be foolish of me.
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Post by echnaton on Jan 5, 2008 20:01:07 GMT -4
`So, basically crime dropped because pre-emptive (very pre-emptive) executions became legal? Sorry, but I don't see that as much of an argument in favor of a policy.
The author was not making policy recommendations but applying his science to the state of nature to get information.. It is not a recommendation for policy but if true cannot be ignored either.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 6, 2008 2:06:41 GMT -4
The author was not making policy recommendations but applying his science to the state of nature to get information.. It is not a recommendation for policy but if true cannot be ignored either. So do you view that information as in favor of keeping abortion legal or against it? And do you feel the author had no particular opinion in mind when he wrote the piece? As I said before, a quality of life argument is a very thorny one. Who decides when a person is better off dead than alive? And if it applies to unborn people, why doesn't it apply to born people as well? The old or the mentally handicapped, for instance? What is the moral difference between killing a child in the womb and one out of it? I know I've asked that one before, but no one has answered it yet.
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Post by PeterB on Jan 6, 2008 8:34:38 GMT -4
So, basically crime dropped because pre-emptive ( very pre-emptive) executions became legal? Sorry, but I don't see that as much of an argument in favor of a policy. *rueful smile* I told you it was an ugly story. And that's great. But as I pointed out, up to the 1970s there were many more children available for adoption than parents willing to adopt. The result was that these children were forced to grow up in orphanages run by churches and government agencies. And many of them had horrible lives, abused by the staff, and told their parents didn't love them.
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