"Abstinence from sexual activity is the only protection that is 100% effective against out-of-wedlock pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS when transmitted sexually," declares the platform adopted by the Republican Party yesterday in St. Paul, Minnesota.
However, abstinence education is not 100% effective in preventing pregnancies. Would you say maybe 50%? 30%?
We can't even convince presidents and presidential candidates to practice abstinence when they consider sex with women other than their wives.
It's not surprising that Sarah and Todd Palin's kids don't consider the Republican platform before choosing to have sex.
The big mystery is why the platform says, "We renew our call for replacing 'family planning' programs for teens with increased funding for abstinence education, which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and expected standard of behavior."
The Republicans and anti-contraception people just don't get it, but the pregnancy of Bristol Palin nudges them a little closer to reality.
Sex happens, just like hurricanes and other unmentionables.
As a society, we can either prepare for it or face the consequences.
Under Republicans, the US began withholding dollars from UN-funded family planning clinics around the world if those clinics offer information on how to obtain abortions. We are holding populations of other countries to ideals that look so pretty in platform statements but don't hold up to real life tests.
The Republican platform also includes a plank saying that "life begins at conception"--well, duh. Any high school student in a biology class can tell you that.
What they mean is that a fertilized human egg should have the moral and legal status of an adult or newborn human being.
You can't mess with that one-celled being, they say, meaning that they oppose most forms of contraception: the IUD, birth control pills, the morning-after pill.
You can't even find a "pro-life" organization that fully endorses condoms, diaphragms, vasectomies, or tubal ligation. They just don't put support for any form of contraception into written statements.
Most heads of these groups have families of seven or more children, like John Sheldon, father of nine, who recently was elected president of Presbyterians Pro-Life, or his father Benjamin Sheldon, father of seven, grandfather of 34, and one of the founders of the National Pro-Life Religious Council.
They seem to believe that the sperm and about-to-be-fertilized egg deserve almost as much protection as the egg at the moment of conception.
"As many children as God gives us" is the ideal of most leaders of the anti-abortion movement.
I can respect a genuine concern for early stages of human life, even when these people try to impose their beliefs on others via the ballot box and Supreme Court.
But when that concern is coupled with an unwillingness to support contraception and sex education, I smell a rat.
People who oppose contraception and sex education cannot be called "pro-life." They're trying to stop life in all its splendid complexity.
What they really want is to control the choices of women and children. Since that's not possible, they end up with more abortions and teenage parents.
Children like Bristol Palin are calling their bluff.
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