The University of South Carolina has what I understand to be a very high quality School of Public Health. They are looking for a tenure-track faculty member with a description that matches my own research fairly well, studying "sexualities, sexual behavior, sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy, LGBT disparities or other sexuality and health issues." Particularly, they want someone who advocates and engages with community, state, national, and global organizations.
I checked their sex ed laws, and according to this profile, they are one of 7 states in the US to prohibit positive depictions of homosexuality in public schools, not a favorable start for any researcher who studies LGBT issues to advocate or engage with the community and local institutions. They also prohibit contraception information other than in the context of future family planning, which is better than nothing. SC is also one of the minority of states to apply for the federal abstinence-only sex education funding, meaning that the programs funded by that funding cannot even mention contraception in any positive way at all.
On the bright side, they also applied for the federal evidence-based sex education and pregnancy prevention funds, which they could certainly use since SC has the third highest gonorrhea rate in the country, and 8% of women ages 15-19 get pregnant each year, and 5% give birth. Looking at the gap between pregnancy and birth rates, it's particularly remarkable because 72% of SC women live in a county without an abortion provider (93% of counties lack an abortion provider), Medicaid does not fund abortions, they mandate a 24 hour waiting period and all procedures 12 weeks and after are a felony with mandatory minimum of 5 years in jail and/or $5000 fine.
Thanks to NARAL and Kaiser for the facts. The SC ACLU also has a long access guide listing all the sexuality, family planning, and related resources (e.g., PFLAG) in the state and neighboring states. So the state fortunately has some resources, even if they get an F by NARAL.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Friday, June 24, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Contraception and Casual sex
Gail Collins writes about the uneasy relationship between social conservatives and contraception. She cites two arguments that social conservatives make about contraception: the first relies on incorrect biology and the second reflects uneasiness with casual sex.
Collins spends more time on the incorrect biology argument, but I think that the social conservatives are more motivated by their unease with casual sex. The incorrect biology is not literally true in any way, but social conservatives may believe that the biology is metaphorically true. That is, many forces within the modern world are inhibiting committed relationships and family formation, and they hypothesize that one of the forces is contraception, which is a logical fallacy, but the emotional argument is understandable.
Social conservatives are terribly troubled by the state of modern sexual ethics, or the lack thereof. Their nostalgia is to some extent false: premarital sex and casual sex were not invented with the birth control pill, and the decline of marriage is explained by a myriad of social, economic, and demographic factors.
Nonetheless, their argument has a real kernel of truth that few deal with because it violates third wave feminism: casual sex is more common than it used to be, and all the research I'm aware of finds that casual sex has more negatives than positives (click on the casual sex label for my earlier summaries of that research).
Casual sex occurs between closed doors, both liberals and conservatives have casual sex, and I know of no policy that would decrease casual sex. Given its murky origins, it's not surprising that social conservatives are indiscriminate in the policies and theories that they scapegoat to explain casual sex. Sex education, family planning, emergency contraception, abortion, and Arnett's theory of emerging adulthood do not cause casual sex, and casual sex probably does not inhibit family formation. Social conservatives just cannot think of better explanations, especially given the relative paucity of research on casual sex. Liberals fear that attacks on casual sex are disguised attacks on reproductive rights, rather than seeing that for many the opposite is true: casual sex is the enemy, and reproductive rights are the scapegoat.
And so we have these repeated battles that really all stem from the same thing: unease with casual sex and delayed family formation.
Most people having this dialogue are married, and most married people have long been insulated from the world of singles and their sexual decisions. Instead, they take sides based on their other political beliefs.
The married social conservatives believe that casual sex comes from liberals, not realizing how much exists organically among conservatives and how many liberals have wholesome sexual ethics and are eager to marry. The married liberals believe that casual sex does no harm as long as both the sex and its casualness are consensual, as if such consent were truly possible. My understanding of the qualitative research (Bogle's Hooking Up) is that women may freely consent to casual sex only within limited circumstances (e.g., experimentation), but see it as second best outside those circumstances; conversely, women create the circumstances that enable casual sex by discounting many men, artificially narrowing their dating pool, giving more power to the few men considered "good catches."
Both married liberals and conservatives have apparently forgotten, or maybe they never experienced, the dating market that makes all of these issues so complicated. We can agree on one thing: most people want to get married and have extremely high expectations for marriage, but the path to marriage is murky for myriad reasons. Until we know otherwise, probably the best we can do is practice good sexual ethics and help individuals wherever we can.
At a policy level, the marriage and family formation research indicates that economic factors inhibit marriage among lower income groups, and the decline of unions, widening income inequality, and reduction in good jobs are likely responsible. If we invested the trillions of dollars needed to upgrade our infrastructure from a D to a B, providing jobs for lower income groups, that could help the country both economically (e.g., improved productivity due to reduction in accidents and water main breaks) and socially (by giving income and good jobs to (mostly) men, some of whom would marry their female companions.)
Collins spends more time on the incorrect biology argument, but I think that the social conservatives are more motivated by their unease with casual sex. The incorrect biology is not literally true in any way, but social conservatives may believe that the biology is metaphorically true. That is, many forces within the modern world are inhibiting committed relationships and family formation, and they hypothesize that one of the forces is contraception, which is a logical fallacy, but the emotional argument is understandable.
Social conservatives are terribly troubled by the state of modern sexual ethics, or the lack thereof. Their nostalgia is to some extent false: premarital sex and casual sex were not invented with the birth control pill, and the decline of marriage is explained by a myriad of social, economic, and demographic factors.
Nonetheless, their argument has a real kernel of truth that few deal with because it violates third wave feminism: casual sex is more common than it used to be, and all the research I'm aware of finds that casual sex has more negatives than positives (click on the casual sex label for my earlier summaries of that research).
Casual sex occurs between closed doors, both liberals and conservatives have casual sex, and I know of no policy that would decrease casual sex. Given its murky origins, it's not surprising that social conservatives are indiscriminate in the policies and theories that they scapegoat to explain casual sex. Sex education, family planning, emergency contraception, abortion, and Arnett's theory of emerging adulthood do not cause casual sex, and casual sex probably does not inhibit family formation. Social conservatives just cannot think of better explanations, especially given the relative paucity of research on casual sex. Liberals fear that attacks on casual sex are disguised attacks on reproductive rights, rather than seeing that for many the opposite is true: casual sex is the enemy, and reproductive rights are the scapegoat.
And so we have these repeated battles that really all stem from the same thing: unease with casual sex and delayed family formation.
Most people having this dialogue are married, and most married people have long been insulated from the world of singles and their sexual decisions. Instead, they take sides based on their other political beliefs.
The married social conservatives believe that casual sex comes from liberals, not realizing how much exists organically among conservatives and how many liberals have wholesome sexual ethics and are eager to marry. The married liberals believe that casual sex does no harm as long as both the sex and its casualness are consensual, as if such consent were truly possible. My understanding of the qualitative research (Bogle's Hooking Up) is that women may freely consent to casual sex only within limited circumstances (e.g., experimentation), but see it as second best outside those circumstances; conversely, women create the circumstances that enable casual sex by discounting many men, artificially narrowing their dating pool, giving more power to the few men considered "good catches."
Both married liberals and conservatives have apparently forgotten, or maybe they never experienced, the dating market that makes all of these issues so complicated. We can agree on one thing: most people want to get married and have extremely high expectations for marriage, but the path to marriage is murky for myriad reasons. Until we know otherwise, probably the best we can do is practice good sexual ethics and help individuals wherever we can.
At a policy level, the marriage and family formation research indicates that economic factors inhibit marriage among lower income groups, and the decline of unions, widening income inequality, and reduction in good jobs are likely responsible. If we invested the trillions of dollars needed to upgrade our infrastructure from a D to a B, providing jobs for lower income groups, that could help the country both economically (e.g., improved productivity due to reduction in accidents and water main breaks) and socially (by giving income and good jobs to (mostly) men, some of whom would marry their female companions.)
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
My Baltimore Sun op-ed defending O'Donnell on abstinence, but not on poverty
My op-ed in today's Baltimore Sun says that O'Donnell's personal religious beliefs about abstinence and masturbation are reasonably mainstream evangelical beliefs, but that her mainstream Republican beliefs ignore that the Bible says that fortunate, wealthy societies have an obligation to provide for the poor.
Originally I framed the article as we should be sensitive to her because the Bible says to be sensitive to those who are alone through no fault of their own like widows, orphans, and converts, but the Bible also says societies have the obligation to be generous to the poor. This obligation to sensitivity for widows, orphans, and converts seems to extend to be sensitive also to people who are involuntarily single, as virtually all religious single adults are, and abstinence must be a particularly difficult subject for her since abstinence means that she has an idealized view of marriage and her eventual husband she hoped would love her for her beliefs and admire her for having stuck to them since her conversion to become more religious. I liked the parallelism, but it involved too much speculation about her personal life.
More importantly, I'm not a religious authority, so it's not my place to say what we should and shouldn't do.
Two good comments so far on Baltimore Sun. One said how to you judge which beliefs you criticize candidates for. That's a really terrific topic --- many politicians have personal religious beliefs, but they maintain a line between those beliefs and the policies that they support. One example is Joe Lieberman where it's my understanding that his personal religious beliefs should in theory make him more supportive of social programs to help the poor, but lately he has been voting against these programs for what may be political reasons. A case where religious beliefs do influence policy for Christine O'Donnell is that she is clearly extremely anti-abortion and anti-choice --- she would ban abortion even for rape survivors --- and there's every reason to expect she would vote that way, and that's a great reason to vote against her, but that's from her policy statements, not from her religious beliefs. On the other hand, there are some distinguished politicians who have personal beliefs against abortion, and they themselves would not have abortions except under limited circumstances, who have strongly pro-choice voting records. It would be a great study to look at when what we know of candidates' personal religious beliefs agree with their voting records, and when their personal religious beliefs contrast with them. And perhaps this study has already been done. Any political scientists to comment?
Second comment calls for holding politicians accountable for making "rational evidence-based decisions," and oh my, I am so in agreement with that. Not making evidence-based decisions, and instead making decisions for reasons of politics, is extremely common in our government. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist and an expert in the Great Depression, and he's been writing op-eds for the past 2 years saying that we need to give more stimulus or unemployment is going to stay high for years and years, and we are going to lose a generation. And he's been saying the same theme over and over, and he's an extremely distinguished economist, a Nobel Prize winner, and not enough politicians listened to him to affect policy. And the failure to provide fiscal policy that can be adequate stimulus is the worst way that the government can fail people. We're talking about hurting young adults who happen to be coming of age now and during the next several years, and the effects of a worse job market when they come of age will affect them for their ENTIRE LIVES, and they will have not just lower earnings, but (judging by studies of past generations born in high unemployment eras) worse social problems. That's huge, and in my opinion way more important than abstinence education. But, yes, abstinence education is a shame, especially how $50 million abstinence-only funding came back in the health care reform bill in order to get it through Congress. And both of those issues are because of the 60 vote filibuster, and the fact that Senators no longer have to actually filibuster, they can just claim that they are. Some have said that if they actually had to speak for 24 hours straight, they would do it less. Again, the political scientists can speak.
Originally I framed the article as we should be sensitive to her because the Bible says to be sensitive to those who are alone through no fault of their own like widows, orphans, and converts, but the Bible also says societies have the obligation to be generous to the poor. This obligation to sensitivity for widows, orphans, and converts seems to extend to be sensitive also to people who are involuntarily single, as virtually all religious single adults are, and abstinence must be a particularly difficult subject for her since abstinence means that she has an idealized view of marriage and her eventual husband she hoped would love her for her beliefs and admire her for having stuck to them since her conversion to become more religious. I liked the parallelism, but it involved too much speculation about her personal life.
More importantly, I'm not a religious authority, so it's not my place to say what we should and shouldn't do.
Two good comments so far on Baltimore Sun. One said how to you judge which beliefs you criticize candidates for. That's a really terrific topic --- many politicians have personal religious beliefs, but they maintain a line between those beliefs and the policies that they support. One example is Joe Lieberman where it's my understanding that his personal religious beliefs should in theory make him more supportive of social programs to help the poor, but lately he has been voting against these programs for what may be political reasons. A case where religious beliefs do influence policy for Christine O'Donnell is that she is clearly extremely anti-abortion and anti-choice --- she would ban abortion even for rape survivors --- and there's every reason to expect she would vote that way, and that's a great reason to vote against her, but that's from her policy statements, not from her religious beliefs. On the other hand, there are some distinguished politicians who have personal beliefs against abortion, and they themselves would not have abortions except under limited circumstances, who have strongly pro-choice voting records. It would be a great study to look at when what we know of candidates' personal religious beliefs agree with their voting records, and when their personal religious beliefs contrast with them. And perhaps this study has already been done. Any political scientists to comment?
Second comment calls for holding politicians accountable for making "rational evidence-based decisions," and oh my, I am so in agreement with that. Not making evidence-based decisions, and instead making decisions for reasons of politics, is extremely common in our government. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist and an expert in the Great Depression, and he's been writing op-eds for the past 2 years saying that we need to give more stimulus or unemployment is going to stay high for years and years, and we are going to lose a generation. And he's been saying the same theme over and over, and he's an extremely distinguished economist, a Nobel Prize winner, and not enough politicians listened to him to affect policy. And the failure to provide fiscal policy that can be adequate stimulus is the worst way that the government can fail people. We're talking about hurting young adults who happen to be coming of age now and during the next several years, and the effects of a worse job market when they come of age will affect them for their ENTIRE LIVES, and they will have not just lower earnings, but (judging by studies of past generations born in high unemployment eras) worse social problems. That's huge, and in my opinion way more important than abstinence education. But, yes, abstinence education is a shame, especially how $50 million abstinence-only funding came back in the health care reform bill in order to get it through Congress. And both of those issues are because of the 60 vote filibuster, and the fact that Senators no longer have to actually filibuster, they can just claim that they are. Some have said that if they actually had to speak for 24 hours straight, they would do it less. Again, the political scientists can speak.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Sarah Palin has a new ad featuring women who, the ad implies, are traditional, sensible moms who know best. The ad makes vague statements like "We don't like the direction this country's going," as the camera lingers over blonde, brunette, grey, and white-haired daughters, mothers, grandmothers, of all shades of white, and even one in a wheelchair with "Don't Tread On Me" on the wheelchair's back. That sure sends a message, but I darn well hope that was completely unintentional. Right?
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Three months without federal abstinence-only funding
The US had 3 months without abstinence-only funding on the books before the health reform law reinstated it: $50 million a year for 5 years for the states, the exact same level of state-level abstinence funding as in the previous administration, even though fewer states are applying for the funds. Even Alaska under Sarah Palin "missed the deadline" for abstinence grants in the last round. (No Sarah Palin jokes. Missing the deadline just seems to be the politically expedient method of not participating in abstinence funding.)
The difference between current funding and the previous administration seems to be $154 million: community organizations are no longer given abstinence grants ($141 million in 2009) and the Adolescent Family Life abstinence program is no longer listed in the budget ($13 million in 2009). Not funding AFL is surprising, and I wonder if I've missed something since that program has been funded consistently since the early 1980s, but I don't see in the 2011 HHS budget; this program generally flies under the radar and is usually not mentioned in media reports about abstinence education, even though organizations like Advocates for Youth track it.
The decrease in abstinence-only education funding from $204 million to $50 million represents additional good news: the $50 million is going to states who are scrutinized more heavily. For instance, some states have laws requiring that all sex education be medically accurate. On the other hand, increasing numbers of states require contraception to be taught in sex education, which may mean that even if the states wanted to apply for the abstinence funds, their state law mandates a curriculum that is incompatible with the abstinence education requirements. The a-h definition of abstinence education in the Title V is so restrictive that the only abstinence-only program that has ever been shown effective (Jemmott and Jemmott's research) could not be funded under Title V.
Another difference between the pre-2009 and current HHS budgets is that abstinence was featured prominently in the budget in 2009 and before. Many pages of the pre-2009 budgets mentioned abstinence, and there was a whole subsection describing all the sources of abstinence funding and their histories. The 2011 budget doesn't have any text about abstinence and only includes abstinence in the itemized totals, mostly for past years, and has "--" where future years of abstinence funding are supposed to be listed. (The new 50 million a year isn't yet listed in the 2011 budget.)
While the country had only the 3 month period between the zero-ing out of abstinence education at the end of December 2009 and the passage of the health reform bill at the end of March 2010, there's certainly a big shift.
The really interesting question is how many states will apply for abstinence funds, since more states now have comprehensive sex education laws that are incompatible with applying for the funds, and whether it would be possible for the a-h definition to be changed. Or if the $50 million will go only to the states with strong abstinence-only constituencies such as Louisiana and Texas.
The difference between current funding and the previous administration seems to be $154 million: community organizations are no longer given abstinence grants ($141 million in 2009) and the Adolescent Family Life abstinence program is no longer listed in the budget ($13 million in 2009). Not funding AFL is surprising, and I wonder if I've missed something since that program has been funded consistently since the early 1980s, but I don't see in the 2011 HHS budget; this program generally flies under the radar and is usually not mentioned in media reports about abstinence education, even though organizations like Advocates for Youth track it.
The decrease in abstinence-only education funding from $204 million to $50 million represents additional good news: the $50 million is going to states who are scrutinized more heavily. For instance, some states have laws requiring that all sex education be medically accurate. On the other hand, increasing numbers of states require contraception to be taught in sex education, which may mean that even if the states wanted to apply for the abstinence funds, their state law mandates a curriculum that is incompatible with the abstinence education requirements. The a-h definition of abstinence education in the Title V is so restrictive that the only abstinence-only program that has ever been shown effective (Jemmott and Jemmott's research) could not be funded under Title V.
Another difference between the pre-2009 and current HHS budgets is that abstinence was featured prominently in the budget in 2009 and before. Many pages of the pre-2009 budgets mentioned abstinence, and there was a whole subsection describing all the sources of abstinence funding and their histories. The 2011 budget doesn't have any text about abstinence and only includes abstinence in the itemized totals, mostly for past years, and has "--" where future years of abstinence funding are supposed to be listed. (The new 50 million a year isn't yet listed in the 2011 budget.)
While the country had only the 3 month period between the zero-ing out of abstinence education at the end of December 2009 and the passage of the health reform bill at the end of March 2010, there's certainly a big shift.
The really interesting question is how many states will apply for abstinence funds, since more states now have comprehensive sex education laws that are incompatible with applying for the funds, and whether it would be possible for the a-h definition to be changed. Or if the $50 million will go only to the states with strong abstinence-only constituencies such as Louisiana and Texas.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Political compromises on sex ed
I'm an ardent moderate, but I find the administration's compromises counterproductive. Obviously the stimulus compromise didn't work: the bill was watered down, and virtually no Republicans voted for it anyhow.
If the health bill passes, the sex education situation will go to $50 million for abstinence-only education, $50 million for evidence-based comprehensive sex education, and $25 million for experimental comprehensive sex education. That's not compromise. That's going also against popular opinion: 52% of even politically "very conservative" parents favor teaching birth control in schools, and 89% of the general population of parents. Just as most of the public and most physicians favor the public option, but that doesn't make it into policy either.
More importantly, it's going agsinst the findings of the Congressionally-mandated study finding that abstinence-only sex education doesn't work.
They're not listening to either the public or the researchers they hired.
If the health bill passes, the sex education situation will go to $50 million for abstinence-only education, $50 million for evidence-based comprehensive sex education, and $25 million for experimental comprehensive sex education. That's not compromise. That's going also against popular opinion: 52% of even politically "very conservative" parents favor teaching birth control in schools, and 89% of the general population of parents. Just as most of the public and most physicians favor the public option, but that doesn't make it into policy either.
More importantly, it's going agsinst the findings of the Congressionally-mandated study finding that abstinence-only sex education doesn't work.
They're not listening to either the public or the researchers they hired.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
An open letter to Senator Orrin Hatch
Dear Senator Hatch,
I am the author of two of the approximately ten published papers about the sexual behavior of virginity pledgers. I found that virginity pledgers may lie about their sexual pasts and that they are less likely to use condoms when they do have sex.
Thank you for thinking of my research when you added an amendment for $50 million of Abstinence-Only Sex Education funds to the health reform bill. If the federal government does not fund abstinence education, my research into the sexual behavior of virginity pledgers and evangelical adolescents would lack policy relevance, so I'm truly grateful for this opportunity.
Nonetheless, I have to turn down this generous offer. I have a surfeit of other research topics, and I've moved on with my research. Even most abstinence proponents have moved on with their efforts. Every abstinence proponent I've spoken with, including leading Southern Baptists, seem to accept that their approach to sex education needs to be reworked. The evangelical media's reaction to my most recent paper finding virginity pledges do not work was mild (in the case of Focus on the Family Radio and the Baptist Press) and even favorable (in the case of Christianity Today).
More importantly, as you know, the case against Abstinence-Only Sex Education was definitively made by the Congressionally-mandated evaluation of the program published in 2007 by Mathematica Policy Research.
I consider that perhaps you made this amendment for ironic effect: if your amendment stays in the bill, the Democrats who favor health reform will have to vote for your abstinence funding. If so, your point was made, and I have laughed heartily at the irony. Now you can remove it.
Best of luck in your continued efforts.
Love,
Janet Rosenbaum, PhD
I am the author of two of the approximately ten published papers about the sexual behavior of virginity pledgers. I found that virginity pledgers may lie about their sexual pasts and that they are less likely to use condoms when they do have sex.
Thank you for thinking of my research when you added an amendment for $50 million of Abstinence-Only Sex Education funds to the health reform bill. If the federal government does not fund abstinence education, my research into the sexual behavior of virginity pledgers and evangelical adolescents would lack policy relevance, so I'm truly grateful for this opportunity.
Nonetheless, I have to turn down this generous offer. I have a surfeit of other research topics, and I've moved on with my research. Even most abstinence proponents have moved on with their efforts. Every abstinence proponent I've spoken with, including leading Southern Baptists, seem to accept that their approach to sex education needs to be reworked. The evangelical media's reaction to my most recent paper finding virginity pledges do not work was mild (in the case of Focus on the Family Radio and the Baptist Press) and even favorable (in the case of Christianity Today).
More importantly, as you know, the case against Abstinence-Only Sex Education was definitively made by the Congressionally-mandated evaluation of the program published in 2007 by Mathematica Policy Research.
I consider that perhaps you made this amendment for ironic effect: if your amendment stays in the bill, the Democrats who favor health reform will have to vote for your abstinence funding. If so, your point was made, and I have laughed heartily at the irony. Now you can remove it.
Best of luck in your continued efforts.
Love,
Janet Rosenbaum, PhD
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Late night Congressional abstinence exchange
Congress abstinence debate had the following exchange:
Later in the debate, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said federal dollars should only fund sex education programs -- including abstinence-only ones -- in schools that have proof that they cut pregnancy rates. She noted that abstinence-only sex ed came along in 1981.
[Joe] Barton [R- Tex.] interjected that abstinence-only has been around much longer than that, at least since his dating days. "Every girl I dated practiced it," he said. "And it was very effective, because when I went to pick them up, their fathers reinforced it on me. So it does work and it has been around much longer than the 1980s."
"Maybe," DeGette suggested to Barton, "it was [practiced] on a case-by-case basis."
Friday, June 26, 2009
Congratulations to North Carolina
North Carolina passed a bill mandating that 7-9th graders be taught both abstinence methods of contraception and STD prevention, and the governor is expected to sign it. This bill is different than the original proposed, which had required that all schools offer two sex ed classes that parents would choose between. This bill just allows parents to pull their children from the STD/pregnancy prevention portion of the class.
The current policy for the past 15 years has been that school districts that wish to teach birth control in school must go through a separate approval process to be able to teach birth control.
It is sad that no Republicans voted for the bill. I wonder whether there is any compromise legislation or any research that would convince Republicans to allow teaching birth control in schools.
The evidence from RAND's intervention to teach parents how to teach sex education to their adolescents finds that even with an 8 week program for these parents who volunteered to participate, the majority of parents STILL didn't teach their kids how to use condoms. And this is a group of parents cherry-picked for their motivation. Other parents would likely do worse. No matter what your ideals are about parents' duties towards their adolescents, the reality seems to be that if you want condom use to be taught, you have to put it in the schools. Or let them learn on youtube or in an STD clinic waiting room. Watching instructional videos in the waiting room of an STD clinic reduces the risk of repeat visits, after all.
The current policy for the past 15 years has been that school districts that wish to teach birth control in school must go through a separate approval process to be able to teach birth control.
It is sad that no Republicans voted for the bill. I wonder whether there is any compromise legislation or any research that would convince Republicans to allow teaching birth control in schools.
The evidence from RAND's intervention to teach parents how to teach sex education to their adolescents finds that even with an 8 week program for these parents who volunteered to participate, the majority of parents STILL didn't teach their kids how to use condoms. And this is a group of parents cherry-picked for their motivation. Other parents would likely do worse. No matter what your ideals are about parents' duties towards their adolescents, the reality seems to be that if you want condom use to be taught, you have to put it in the schools. Or let them learn on youtube or in an STD clinic waiting room. Watching instructional videos in the waiting room of an STD clinic reduces the risk of repeat visits, after all.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Reformulating or rebranding abstinence
There's a vivid and interesting piece in the Nation about the abstinence movement's attempt to rebrand/reformulate itself. At times, I laughed: Jessica Valenti writes dynamically and compellingly. She raises some important points, though I don't agree with everything she says. (E.g., I think that the trend of traditional religions using feminism to promote traditionalism is complex and subtle. Her take is that "the virginity movement is ... a targeted and well-funded backlash hellbent on rolling back women's rights using modernized notions of purity, morality and sexuality.")
The central point of her article is crucial: the abstinence movement recognizes that it needs to give accurate information about contraception, which I see as a terrific coup for the cause of scientific accuracy. Perhaps the reformulation is being done with good will: they see problems with current version and honestly they want to make it better for the sake of teens' health. Or perhaps Valenti is right and this recognition is just lip service and won't change what they are actually doing, though even lip service is good.
Whether reformulation or rebranding, this change calls for vigilance. The abstinence-only movement is taking the "only" out of their label: now it's "abstinence centered" which is confusingly similar to "abstinence-plus" or "abstinence-based" which mean comprehensive sex education, so it will take an extra moment to even determine whether a curriculum intends to be comprehensive or not.
If there are inaccuracies in the new curricula, they may be more subtle. The most productive thing reproductive health community can do is make sure that what is taught in schools is accurate. Some states mandate that all sex education gets reviewed by clinicians for accuracy, but others don't. If all states established such requirements of review by medical experts, that would make it a moot point whether the abstinence movement is doing a cynical rebranding or a good will reformulation of its movement.
The central point of her article is crucial: the abstinence movement recognizes that it needs to give accurate information about contraception, which I see as a terrific coup for the cause of scientific accuracy. Perhaps the reformulation is being done with good will: they see problems with current version and honestly they want to make it better for the sake of teens' health. Or perhaps Valenti is right and this recognition is just lip service and won't change what they are actually doing, though even lip service is good.
Whether reformulation or rebranding, this change calls for vigilance. The abstinence-only movement is taking the "only" out of their label: now it's "abstinence centered" which is confusingly similar to "abstinence-plus" or "abstinence-based" which mean comprehensive sex education, so it will take an extra moment to even determine whether a curriculum intends to be comprehensive or not.
If there are inaccuracies in the new curricula, they may be more subtle. The most productive thing reproductive health community can do is make sure that what is taught in schools is accurate. Some states mandate that all sex education gets reviewed by clinicians for accuracy, but others don't. If all states established such requirements of review by medical experts, that would make it a moot point whether the abstinence movement is doing a cynical rebranding or a good will reformulation of its movement.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
"Imagine no religion" campaign
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has a new billboard campaign asking viewers to imagine no religion. They erected one billboard in the town with the headquarters of Focus on the Family, which I do find kind-of funny. Though funny in the same way that I find the abstinence billboards in neighborhoods with high teen birth rates.
The campaign has encouraged umpteen editorials with the standard secularist messianic thinking: fewer wars, no terrorism, no abstinence-only education, more title V family planning funding.
How about "Imagine No Extremists"? Not only would pragmatic compromise become easier, but perhaps there wouldn't be evangelical atheists and their billboards either.
The campaign has encouraged umpteen editorials with the standard secularist messianic thinking: fewer wars, no terrorism, no abstinence-only education, more title V family planning funding.
How about "Imagine No Extremists"? Not only would pragmatic compromise become easier, but perhaps there wouldn't be evangelical atheists and their billboards either.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Review of Unprotected
This book is unfortunately one that can be accurately judged by its cover. A girl in an uncomfortably-short skirt and high-heeled strappy sandals, slumps dejectedly at a table, her Burberry purse slung over the other shoulder, shadows and limbs strategically placed. And by its title, Unprotected: A campus psychiatrist reveals how political correctness in her profession endangers every student, by Anonymous, M.D. This evident alarmism --- PC is so insidious that the author must remain anonymous or risk Birkenstocks being thrown through her front windows --- that pervades the book may cause parents and aggrieved social conservatives to pick up the book, but it does no good for Dr. Anonymous's arguments and alienates people who might otherwise agree with her.
A friend of mine, an observant Jew who every week attends prayer services where the sexes are separated by a curtain, is a prime candidate for a reader who might agree with this book's argument. Her conclusion after skimming the book, however, was, "Books like this make me mad." She objected to its overly dramatic language and attempt to scare the reader into agreement.
Dr. Grossman's arguments (Dr. Anonymous turned out to be psychiatrist Dr. Miriam Grossman from UCLA) are themselves very worth consideration and further research. Here they are. I think any of these could spawn half a dozen good studies. I do not think that they are generally repressed by political correctness at the level of academic research. Research is usually not sufficiently disseminated, though, and maybe that is the problem: this certainly wouldn't be the first area where quality of health care suffered because practitioners followed their intuitions instead of evidence-based guidelines or the evidence was never disseminated in the first place.
At any rate, here they are:
1. Casual premarital sex may be emotionally dangerous for at least some adolescents and young adults, especially for women due to their hormonal response to orgasm and stimulation of erogenous zones. Many young women have strong emotions that accompany what they had wanted to consider casual relationships, which surprise them.
2. People know very little about STDs and underestimate the risks:
a. Condoms don't protect completely against some STDs, especially since adolescents and even young adults don't use them consistently.
b. Younger people are more vulnerable to STDs than older people.
c. Some STDs are incurable and some have a small chance of causing fertility problems over a relatively short period.
d. STDs are given short shrift in the larger health care picture. She concludes college should require universal testing for common STDs such as chlamydia, just as they require universal testing for TB.
3. Abstinence is not considered to be a virtue to the extent that other disciplined behaviors are. (I made this argument a few weeks ago.)
4. Counselors are required to be culturally competent to deal with all potential clients, but while they are taught sensitivity to rare minorities such as transgender and Muslims, this cultural sensitivity does not extend to larger traditional minorities such as evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews.
5. A spiritual discipline, whether meditation, yoga, or traditional religious prayer, appears to be beneficial for mental health in both the short and long term.
6. HIV is more difficult for healthy people to contract from vaginal intercourse than people commonly believe, and this disproportionate fear of HIV may cause anxiety and panic attacks in some people, as well as discounting larger actual risks from more contagious STDs.
7. Abortion has different meanings to different women, and different meanings before and after an abortion. Some women regard abortion as simply a medical procedure, and other women see more profound meaning in abortions, and some women change their beliefs about abortion after their experiences with them.
8. Women underestimate the risks to their fertility of waiting to have children past age 35, most do not know that fertility declines dramatically after age 35, and that fertility technology is very limited in its ability to help women and also very expensive.
These topics can be addressed in both research and in practice.
In research, these topics are neglected, but only to the extent that many women's health and sexual health issues are. When raised in the right way, my experience is that almost everyone considers these to be legitimate arguments and subjects of study.
In practice, it may be another story. It is true that some of these issues are not well-disseminated, but lots of research isn't. People are woefully ignorant about their own health, and the surprise isn't that some issues are neglected, it is that some concerns manage to rise to the top. The concerns she mentions that young adults are highly aware of are weight control, cholesterol, and osteoporosis. The motivation for the the first is immediate self-interest, knowledge about cholesterol comes via middle-aged men, and I'm not sure the third is a concern college students are aware of, but to the extent that they are, their knowledge comes via middle-aged women and grandparents with brittle bones. STDs are hidden and stigmatized and can't be as salient to young adults.
Another problem is that so frequently these discussions are politicized. Many have a suspicion of anything that might turn out to be the socially conservative version of political correctness. It seems to me that in the current administration, this suspicion is more than justified. I've heard from a few different people that the administration has made appointments even at low levels to enforce their socially conservative PC (SCPC). One example went down to the same semantic pickiness that liberal PC is mocked for: the appointee ensured that the term "prostitution" was used instead "commercial sex work," and even those who found the former term offensively pejorative were pressured into using the term. Since the liberals were underdogs in this and many other situations, it seems highly sensible that they would resist what they perceive as SCPC infiltration.
Reasons besides politics why each concern is not disseminated adequately are worth exploring, and I may do that.
I hope that in the future administration, we can move past these political divisions and actually work constructively together to solve these real problems, first by disseminating the existing evidence and then by doing new work. It may be simply an issue of framing issues the right way, and unfortunately this book does nothing to help its own cause.
A friend of mine, an observant Jew who every week attends prayer services where the sexes are separated by a curtain, is a prime candidate for a reader who might agree with this book's argument. Her conclusion after skimming the book, however, was, "Books like this make me mad." She objected to its overly dramatic language and attempt to scare the reader into agreement.
Dr. Grossman's arguments (Dr. Anonymous turned out to be psychiatrist Dr. Miriam Grossman from UCLA) are themselves very worth consideration and further research. Here they are. I think any of these could spawn half a dozen good studies. I do not think that they are generally repressed by political correctness at the level of academic research. Research is usually not sufficiently disseminated, though, and maybe that is the problem: this certainly wouldn't be the first area where quality of health care suffered because practitioners followed their intuitions instead of evidence-based guidelines or the evidence was never disseminated in the first place.
At any rate, here they are:
1. Casual premarital sex may be emotionally dangerous for at least some adolescents and young adults, especially for women due to their hormonal response to orgasm and stimulation of erogenous zones. Many young women have strong emotions that accompany what they had wanted to consider casual relationships, which surprise them.
2. People know very little about STDs and underestimate the risks:
a. Condoms don't protect completely against some STDs, especially since adolescents and even young adults don't use them consistently.
b. Younger people are more vulnerable to STDs than older people.
c. Some STDs are incurable and some have a small chance of causing fertility problems over a relatively short period.
d. STDs are given short shrift in the larger health care picture. She concludes college should require universal testing for common STDs such as chlamydia, just as they require universal testing for TB.
3. Abstinence is not considered to be a virtue to the extent that other disciplined behaviors are. (I made this argument a few weeks ago.)
4. Counselors are required to be culturally competent to deal with all potential clients, but while they are taught sensitivity to rare minorities such as transgender and Muslims, this cultural sensitivity does not extend to larger traditional minorities such as evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews.
5. A spiritual discipline, whether meditation, yoga, or traditional religious prayer, appears to be beneficial for mental health in both the short and long term.
6. HIV is more difficult for healthy people to contract from vaginal intercourse than people commonly believe, and this disproportionate fear of HIV may cause anxiety and panic attacks in some people, as well as discounting larger actual risks from more contagious STDs.
7. Abortion has different meanings to different women, and different meanings before and after an abortion. Some women regard abortion as simply a medical procedure, and other women see more profound meaning in abortions, and some women change their beliefs about abortion after their experiences with them.
8. Women underestimate the risks to their fertility of waiting to have children past age 35, most do not know that fertility declines dramatically after age 35, and that fertility technology is very limited in its ability to help women and also very expensive.
These topics can be addressed in both research and in practice.
In research, these topics are neglected, but only to the extent that many women's health and sexual health issues are. When raised in the right way, my experience is that almost everyone considers these to be legitimate arguments and subjects of study.
In practice, it may be another story. It is true that some of these issues are not well-disseminated, but lots of research isn't. People are woefully ignorant about their own health, and the surprise isn't that some issues are neglected, it is that some concerns manage to rise to the top. The concerns she mentions that young adults are highly aware of are weight control, cholesterol, and osteoporosis. The motivation for the the first is immediate self-interest, knowledge about cholesterol comes via middle-aged men, and I'm not sure the third is a concern college students are aware of, but to the extent that they are, their knowledge comes via middle-aged women and grandparents with brittle bones. STDs are hidden and stigmatized and can't be as salient to young adults.
Another problem is that so frequently these discussions are politicized. Many have a suspicion of anything that might turn out to be the socially conservative version of political correctness. It seems to me that in the current administration, this suspicion is more than justified. I've heard from a few different people that the administration has made appointments even at low levels to enforce their socially conservative PC (SCPC). One example went down to the same semantic pickiness that liberal PC is mocked for: the appointee ensured that the term "prostitution" was used instead "commercial sex work," and even those who found the former term offensively pejorative were pressured into using the term. Since the liberals were underdogs in this and many other situations, it seems highly sensible that they would resist what they perceive as SCPC infiltration.
Reasons besides politics why each concern is not disseminated adequately are worth exploring, and I may do that.
I hope that in the future administration, we can move past these political divisions and actually work constructively together to solve these real problems, first by disseminating the existing evidence and then by doing new work. It may be simply an issue of framing issues the right way, and unfortunately this book does nothing to help its own cause.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Palin supports abstinence-plus, but doesn't call it that
The LA Times reports that Sarah Palin supports teaching condoms in sex ed. Although she declared herself to be a supporter of abstinence-only sex education, Palin said during a debate in 2006, "I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues."
The political orthodoxy is that teaching any contraception cancels out any message of abstinence (e.g., the Abstinence Clearinghouse's statement in the article), but Palin seems not to believe that. It's possible for a conservative Evangelical Christian to agree that it's important to make sure all kids have accurate information about contraception.
Much has been made of the "small town values" and "common sense values" discussed during the Republican convention (see the third segment of Friday's Daily Show for an attempt to define them).
Is it possible that one of the "common sense values" is a pragmatism about the limits of values in affecting behavior?
The political orthodoxy is that teaching any contraception cancels out any message of abstinence (e.g., the Abstinence Clearinghouse's statement in the article), but Palin seems not to believe that. It's possible for a conservative Evangelical Christian to agree that it's important to make sure all kids have accurate information about contraception.
Much has been made of the "small town values" and "common sense values" discussed during the Republican convention (see the third segment of Friday's Daily Show for an attempt to define them).
Is it possible that one of the "common sense values" is a pragmatism about the limits of values in affecting behavior?
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