New research suggests yet another reason why sex education should be taught in the classroom – because teens can learn from each other how to successfully use contraceptive methods.
Tag: contraceptives (Page 1 of 2)
The one thing you can count on in social science research is this: Inquiry will continue until the preferred hypothesis has proven to be true. Proponents for abstinence only sex education are no doubt celebrating new evidence that, on the surface at least, supports their belief. Before funders put their research dollars away, however, they might want to read the fine print first.
If you were to guess the macroeconomic variable that had the widest impact on sexual behavior over the past fifty years, what would you choose? Personally, I would choose the one that increased the age of marriage, reduced teen pregnancy rates, gave women more control of their relationships, and more – relative female wages.
Remember the 1960s? It was a decade so radical that even the President of the United States could publically declare that public funding of contraceptives would increase economic prosperity. Lyndon Johnson went so far as to say “[L]ess than five dollars invested in population control is worth a hundred dollars invested in economic growth.”
Last week Rush Limbaugh said of Sandra Fluke, “If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it.” Well guess what? You are getting something for it. You are getting the chance to remain economically competitive with other developed nations that have been giving women the support they need to control their fertility. Those nations have seen their accidental pregnancy rates fall by more than 29% (from 1995 to 2008) while those in the US have continued to climb.
A couple of years ago Steven Landsburg controversially argued that if we want STI rates to fall then what is needed is more people participating in casual sex. As counter-intuitive as that argument may seem, the reverse of that “unconventional wisdom” appears to be playing out in high schools across America.
Two articles have appeared recently on the topic of sperm snatching. The first is a new blog here at Big Think and the second is an article in yesterday’s Daily Mail by writer Liz Jones. In the Daily Mail article Ms. Jones describes how, over the course of two relationships, she snuck into the bathroom in the middle of the night in order to inseminate herself using sperm rescued from condoms. This despite the fact that both men had made their unwillingness to become fathers very, very clear (hence the condom usage).
Fifty years after the female birth control pill hit the market, male birth control is finally becoming a reality. While I will admit that it must be harder to control a billion sperm than it is to control a single egg, the real reason this technology has taken so long to arrive can be described by two words – supply and demand.
I was in Catholic community center today for a sporting event when a brightly colored poster on a bulletin board caught my eye. The picture was of a parachutist falling gently toward the earth and the caption read “Would he do it if he knew his gear would fail to protect him from injury or death 1 out of 5 times? Why trust a condom to save your life?”
It is impossible for me to think about Easter without thinking about estrus – the peak of female sexuality that takes place when a woman is most fertile. It should be our favourite time of the month and it is good that we honour that every year with this excellent weekend in celebration of fertility. Hard boiled eggs, chicks, bunnies are not things that I think about mid-cycle, but for those who are trying to reproduce (as opposed to desperately trying not to reproduce) these are apt symbols.
