On sexually transmitted diseases

From the Centers for Disease Control on a report released yesterday:

Syphilis, once on the verge of elimination, began re-emerging as a threat in 2001. In 2008, 13,500 cases of primary and secondary syphilis cases were reported, an almost 18 percent increase from 2007. The majority of these syphilis cases (63 percent) continues to be among men who have sex with men (MSM). Increased syphilis transmission among MSM is believed to be the primary driver of syphilis rate increases nationally. For MSM, syphilis infection is of particular concern because it can facilitate HIV transmission and lead to irreversible complications such as strokes, especially in those who are HIV-infected.

While occurring at substantially lower levels among women than men, syphilis rates have been increasing among women since 2004. In 2008, the syphilis rate among women increased 36 percent from the previous year (1.1 cases per 100,000 women in 2007 vs. 1.5 in 2008). By comparison, rates among men increased 15 percent from the previous year (6.6 cases per 100,000 men in 2007 vs. 7.6 in 2008). . . .

From another CDC report in 2009.

U.S. teen pregnancy and birth, STDs, and abortion rates are considerably higher than most other developed countries.

Actually the rate of several STD’s has been increasing. From another article it says:

“Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated,” said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We have among the highest rates of STDs of any developed country in the world,” Douglas added in a telephone interview.

Already the report is being used as political fodder by both sides. The abstinence-only side is saying that this is proof of the need for more mandatory abstinence-only education. The Planned Parenthood side is saying that this is proof that all abstinence education needs to be eradicated from the curriculum of every school and replaced with prevention education.

I actually have a third view. I do not think that either approach will work. Why not? Because both approaches assume that the answer to the problem is education. And, both approaches assume that any hint of the other approach is somehow destructive to people. What the statistics show is that neither approach has worked. There many states that have tried abstinence-only education. In 2003 the statistics were:

Forty-seven states, including Iowa, currently receive Title V funding for abstinence education programs (Pfau and Lee, 1999). More than 700 abstinence education programs are funded under Section 510, sponsoring classes and activities, and providing information throughout the country. (Devaney, Johnson, Maynard and Trenholm, 2002).

And, there are also states that have tried a much more Planned Parenthood approach, but, as the statistics show, those programs have not worked either.

The reality is that neither approach has worked. And, I think that neither approach has worked because both approaches deal only with the “mechanical” part of teen education. Both sides deal only with the intellectual side of the whole issue. Yes, I know that both sides make forays into asking teens to make choices. But, one only has to read the statistics quoted above to see the failure in this country. And, just intellectualism does not even come close to dealing with all that is troubling teenagers and young 20’s in this society. Neither telling teens that it is undoubtedly immoral to engage in those behaviors, nor telling teens that they can make responsible choices (uhm, choices to sin) has worked to stop the rising tide of sexual diseases.

And, neither side deals with the problems that teens face in a culture that consistently emphasizes that only my personal choices count for anything. Frankly, they learned that approach from many of us babyboomers. We babyboomers, whether conservative or liberal, were raised to expect incredible personal liberty. Our personal rights became the only measure by which many (if not most) of us lived. And, we quite well passed on that measure to our children and grandchildren. You see, in order to be able to teach our grandchildren–yes today’s teenagers are the grandchildren of us babyboomers–we would first need to be able to teach ourselves that our personal rights are not the measure by which life is judged.