Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Success of the Pro-Life Abstinence Movement

“AIDS is not the enemy” are the words of Pam Stenzel, head of Enlightenment Communications, an abstinence movement advocate (Goldberg, 136). Stenzel’s group, and many others involved with the abstinence movement, driven by Christian beliefs, consider abstinence the one true contraceptive and aggressively, as well as deceptively discourage any other form. But as Michelle Goldberg and William Cooper infer, not only does the abstinence movement create more of the problems it claims it’s trying to stop, but AIDS not being her enemy couldn’t be any further from the truth.

The Abstinence Movement produces numerous bodies of Christian biased literature in the form of instructional guides and textbooks. In “Sex Respect,” abortion is linked to breast cancer, despite many scientific studies disproving this. The “Silver Ring Thing Sexual Abstinence Study Bibles,” which insist accepting abstinence is accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior, preach, “If you have chosen to reject Christ, then your final destination will be the lake of fire. No arguments. Case closed” (Goldberg, 146).

Not only does the abstinence movement have the funding of evangelical Christians to put out this literature, they have government influence as well. Stenzel was appointed by ex-president George W. Bush to be on a task force within the Department of Health and Human Services (Goldberg, 135). David Hager, another Bush appointed government representative, influenced the FDA to reject their ruling to make the morning after pill available without a prescription because of its seventy-two hour effectiveness. A simple memo from David Hager insisting on making it prescription necessary was all the FDA needed to change their minds (Goldberg, 151).

It’s one thing to pose these beliefs on one’s own children, but these people want these beliefs pushed on everyone’s children, and they are extremely manipulative in their implementation. “How to Start and Operate Your Own Pro-Life Outreach Crisis Pregnancy Center” is a manual put out by the Pearson Foundation (Goldberg, 139). They urge setting up crisis prevention centers near if not right next to abortion clinics. Women in need of prenatal care often mistake CPCs for prenatal clinics. Once inside, they are seen not by medical health professionals, but abstinence advocates in white coats. As they watch their ultrasound, the words “Hi mommy!” are typed below (Goldberg, 140). Before they can see their pregnancy results, they are sometimes forced to watch explicit abortion videos, in an effort to dissuade them from getting an abortion. Instead of scientific advice, what they usually get is “A very aggressive anti-abortion campaign” (Goldberg, 140).

The “campaign,” strongly opposes the use of contraceptives, as well as abortions, and pushes their abstinence program upon teens. But as Goldberg explains, “…abstinence programs don’t do much to stop teens from having sex” (Goldberg, 137). Teens who take virginity pledges not only lose their virginity only a couple months after those who don’t, but because of the anti-contraception rule taught to them, they resort to oral and anal sex, exposing themselves to sexually transmitted diseases. Plus, studies show most teens become more sexually active after receiving chastity lessons. They don’t work. By influencing the youth of our nation not to wear condoms, they have put them more at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, becoming the opposite of “pro-life”, which is also what they preach.

William Cooper, former military man turned rogue radio host, released “Behold a Pale Horse” in 1991. As Cooper stated, due to the baby boom from 1941 to 1955, which not only doubled the world population by 1990 but also disrupted the natural order of the death toll being higher than the rate of life, the Illuminati, a secret society of elites, constructed a two part plan. The first part was to lower the birth rate by creating contraceptives and to encourage homosexuality. “Religion and the old blue laws sabotaged these efforts,” as Cooper wrote. The second part, originally considered a last resort, was to increase the death rate. In an effort to avoid announcing to the public that they must be systematically executed, in 1969 Roman doctor Aurelio Peccei recommended a synthetic “black plague” which would “…attack the autoimmune system and thus render the development of a vaccine impossible” (Cooper). According to Cooper, in 1977, Project MK-NAOMI began in Phoenix, Arizona, where acquired immune deficiency syndrome was manufactured. Africans were infected under the guise of a small-pox vaccine, and in 1978, Dr. Wolf Szmuness implemented the microorganism at the United Stated Centers for Disease Control as a hepatitis B vaccine.

The abstinence movement consider them self “pro-life.” Yet with all of their economic and government influence, because of their unwillingness to accept scientific rationalism, they have actually helped contribute to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and, according to Cooper, death. “AIDS is not the enemy… My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy” is the full quote from Pam Stenzel (Goldberg, 136). It seems that when the Christian abstinence movement says “pro-life,” what they are referring to is the life that supposedly awaits us after death as opposed to the life that lies before us. In that respect, the abstinence movement has been extremely successful in reaching their goals.


Cooper, William. Behold a Pale Horse. Light Technology Pub., 1991.

Goldberg, Michelle. Kingdom Coming. New York: Norton & Co, Inc., 2007.

No comments:

Post a Comment