Category Archives: Birth Control

Planned Parenthood Opposes Choice!

July 2, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

I know it’s hard to believe.  Planned Parenthood opposing choice?  Never!

Ever since Roe v. Wade, over thirty years ago, Planned Parenthood has rallied its forces around the banner of CHOICE.  The ultimate insult, by extension, has been anti-choice.  If you are an enemy of Planned Parenthood, the banner is hoisted high in the sky and voices rise in shrill chants, “Anti-choice, anti-choice, anti-choice!”

Thus, it is a momentous occasion when Planned Parenthood has adopted the tactics of the enemy.  Planned Parenthood is ANTI-CHOICE!  Yes, it is.  Really!

If choice mattered, politicians funded by Planned Parenthood would listen to parents.  And parents have clearly set out what they want for their children.  A 2007 Zogby poll of parents of children age 10-16 showed the following:

  • 9 out of 10 parents agree that being sexually abstinent is best for their child’s health and future, with 8 in 10 strongly agreeing.
  • 8 out of 10 parents think it’s important for their child to wait until they’re married to have sex, with 6 in 10 strongly agreeing.
  • 8 out of 10 parents think sex education in public schools should place more emphasis on promoting abstinence vs. contraceptive use.
  • 2 out of 3 parents believe that promoting alternatives to intercourse (such as showering together and mutual masturbation, which are presented in some comprehensive programs) encourages sexual activity.
  • 6 out of 10 parents think more government funding should be given to abstinence education vs. comprehensive sex education.  Only 2 out of 10 want more funding for comprehensive education.

Planned Parenthood would have you believe otherwise.  They have spent years trying to convince parents otherwise.  They have confounded, confused, manipulated, exaggerated, engineered, maneuvered, exploited…but all to no avail.

Once the truth is revealed, once parents understand the core content and message of abstinence education, by a 3 to 1 margin parents want government funding of sexual abstinence education that promotes abstinence until marriage as the best for their child’s health and future.

Planned Parenthood has reached the end of the road.  The truth cannot be denied.  Thus it must be faced head-on.  Planned Parenthood is finally ANTI-CHOICE.

Planned Parenthood and its allies have clamped down on Congressional members.  They don’t care about the choice of parents who choose abstinence education.  Choice?  They’re against it!

In the greatest ANTI-CHOICE campaign of the year, Planned Parenthood has mustered its full force to deny parents and their children the choice to have abstinence education programs.  And Congressional members who receive campaign donations from Planned Parenthood are all too willing to be a part of this campaign.

Until June 30, federal funding under Title V paid for the choice that parents want…abstinence education.  Even with this funding, the educational choice of parents received only one-tenth of the money given to condom-promotion education…much of that condom pushing money going to Planned Parenthood programs.

But nine-tenths of the money tree isn’t enough for Planned Parenthood.  No.  They want it all.  Choice?  Hang Choice.  Forget Choice.  Kill Choice.

July 1, is a watershed date.  It is the line in the sand.  It is the time when parents must finally take things into their own hands and demand that their choice be heard.  They must gather their voices and rattle the phones of the Congressional representatives who are supposed to represent them.

If not, Planned Parenthood will have ten-tenths.  And our children will have nothing.  This is clearly the goal of Planned Parenthood in its fierce campaign…ANTI-CHOICE!

Technically Speaking

October 9, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

MS Magazine has once again given cover placement to a story about abortion.  Its October 10 issue is a megaphone for women who are announcing, “We Had Abortions.”

Ironically, this new effort to defend abortion points out the failure of the pro-abortion movement during the past thirty years.  As Kathleen Parker points out, past arguments defending American abortion policies have focused on the technical aspects of abortion.

Eleanor Smeal, publisher of MS Magazine, loses no opportunity to point out the obvious to Tucker Carlson.  Technically speaking, she reminds him that abortion is “a medical procedure, that’s obvious.”  She can point to a long list of technical terminology that has been crafted to describe the indescribable.

The litany of techno-talk is, “It’s a woman’s right to choose a medical procedure that removes a small clump of cells from her own body…a simple surgical procedure, the D & E, dilation and evacuation, where the physician extracts the products of conception from the uterus.”  And, technically speaking, they have described abortion.

In a natural progression, much of the dialogue describing the sex that leads to the product of conception that leads to the surgical procedure…all of this talk about sex…has also turned technical since Roe v. Wade.  Sex education, as liberal abortion proponents would have it, is all about technique.

Going into the classroom with boxes of condoms and things to put condoms on, they have reduced sex to technique…ways that children can be taught technically how to have sex and be somewhat, moderately, possibly and hopefully saferrrrrrrrr.

If humans were cars, and if we were installing a muffler on a child car, perhaps we could let these educators get away with it.  But we are not.  And children are not.  Cars, that is.

Cars are things.  Humans are living things.  Living, breathing, hoping, dreaming and loving.  We are not meant to be handled by technoids who describe invasive “procedures” and erotic “actions” with detached language devoid of emotion.

My mind is seared with the memory of a Planned Parenthood educator who demanded allegiance to the language of technique.  Speaking to a friendly National Organization of Women (NOW) audience, she decried the national acceptance of the “medically inaccurate” term partial-birth abortion.  “That’s not what it is!” she declared.  “It’s a D&E.  That’s the accurate medical terminology.  There is no such procedure as partial-birth abortion.”

In the next breathe, she launched into a speech against abstinence education.  “Those programs are terrible…talking about differences between men and women, emotional consequences of sex and promoting marriage.”  Technically speaking, she demanded a return to procedural instructions on how to install a condom on a teen.

Technically speaking, the rationale of the past thirty years is that we only have to perfect the technical aspects of having sex without consequences and then describe that technique in a perfectly technical way.  And it works…as long as you have a heart that is unmoved by a single human tear or the love expressed in a kiss on the cheek.

Why else would MS Magazine, Planned Parenthood, and NOW work so hard to ignore the real pain of people who bought into the false promises of “safe sex”?  Where are the articles describing the experiences of women who refused to be “Silent No More,” the women abused by an abortion industry that hides behind technique?

Already, commentaries responding to the MS Magazine article are pointing out the obvious.  Technique is never well-used to deal with matters of the human heart, the matters of sex…and love…as people have known them since Adam and Eve.

The magazine has invited women to open their hearts.  And as the women describe why they “chose” abortion, readers are asking the many obvious questions that the editors left unasked…and unanswered.

Technically speaking, describing a medical procedure and the events of my life leading up to the surgery, leaves the most important questions unanswered.  How did I close my eyes to the product of conception that could have held my hand and given me a hug?  Where is the man who promised me love and protection?

Great women of courage have told this story.  But you won’t read about it in MS Magazine.

Willing to deal truthfully with what sex and the consequences of sex are, courageous women have humbled themselves to reveal the lies of technical lingo.  They lead important national movements on college campuses, in state legislatures, and in sex education programs.

This, Ms. Smeal, is a story worth telling.  Consider it for your next issue.  Technically speaking, though, I’m not holding my breath. 

 December 26, 2005 –  Small Acts of Courage

June 6, 2005 –  Planned Parenthood’s War Against Choice

  See Archives for past editorials.

 

Expiration Date on Parents

October 2, 2006

 It always happens.  Every time our daughter arrives with a medical malady, it’s always the same.  Last time it was a headache.  Jamie dragged herself in the front door and asked me if I had any aspirin.  “Sure,” I said, “in the bathroom.”

Dropping her purse to the floor, she made a beeline around the corner.  From the kitchen, I heard loud sighs, harrumphs, and plunks as she threw one bottle after the next into the waste can.  Stomping out of bathroom, she grabbed her car keys.  I didn’t have to ask where she was going.  I knew.

Throwing her purse over her shoulder, she knew I knew.  But she told me anyway…just to make a point.  “I can’t believe it.  Don’t you know you’re supposed to throw medicines away after they expire!”

Expiration dates are a big thing in my household only because my children are the official expiration cops who write me up.  Grown now, and on their own, they have their work cut out for themselves when they come for a visit.  Everything is suspect.  No family dinner is safe until the fridge is detoxed of outdated cans and boxes.

Expiration dates are also becoming a big thing in America… impacting more than aspirin and cheese.  Much more.

One day…the day they bring their precious baby home from the hospital, parents are in charge.  They are expected to watch over every detail that might impact their children…sugar content, child seats, exercise habits, television, homework, playmates and transfats.  Parents are in control.

Then one day…one undefined day, when they aren’t aware of anything being different, parents expire.  They don’t expire because they are tired of being parents.  They expire because society is tired of listening to parents.

Case in point, the Senate heads home this week after failing to bring Senate Bill 403 to a vote.  It is a sign that parents have passed their expiration date.  Once allowed oversight over the health of their children, parents are no longer deemed necessary for oversight of a major life-impacting surgery performed on their daughters, abortion.

The Child Custody Protection Act would have reaffirmed the parent’s right to oversee the healthcare of their daughters.  It supported state parental notification laws already in existence.  But the Senate, in their wisdom, noted the expiration date on parents and declared that they were irrelevant.

Parents are passing their useful life all over the country.  You can’t tell it by looking at them.  Neither can you tell it by talking with them.  The easiest way to tell that they have reached their expiration date is by noting the actions of those who would thwart their involvement in the lives of their children.

In Mesa, Arizona, a presenter announced the opening of a health clinic specifically targeting teens.  She said they had set a sign out on the sidewalk so that kids on the way home from school would have to literally step over it.  She said, figuratively, that clinic workers were so anxious to reach teens that they might even go out to the sidewalk themselves to “get” the teens.  Where were the parents?  Expired.

Around the country, Planned Parenthood offices and other like-minded organizations reach out to students with “confidential” birth control.  The parents?  Expired.

Then, when the “confidential” birth control fails, children may purchase an abortion.  In Arizona, Governor Napolitano this year vetoed a bill requiring notarized signatures on parental consent forms. Once again, she tuned her ear to the cries of Planned Parenthood.  In spite of convincing testimony from parents that signatures are easily forged or falsified, the Governor ignored the will of parents in Arizona.  She must have noticed their expiration date.

Around the country, parents’ efforts to stay connected to their children is under assault.  As the number rises for states passing laws providing for parental consent and notification, so, too, rises the number of assaults on these laws.

Now, thanks to the U.S. Senate, even when an effective parental notification law is in place, it doesn’t matter.  It should matter.  But it doesn’t.  Anyone can transport a minor across state lines to circumvent the law that upholds a parent’s right to be involved in an abortion decision.  Expired.

I get a headache thinking about the next time Jamie might arrive with a headache of her own.  It’s been over a year since she bought my last bottle of aspirin.  It’s probably expired by now.

It could be worse.  Thankfully, she is grown and safe from the social engineers who are redesigning America.  I hate to think what she would do if she knew her mom had passed the expiration date for parents.

 

December 26, 2005 – Small Acts of Courage

June 6, 2005 – Planned Parenthood’s War Against Choice

 See Archives for past editorials.

Stay the Course

September 26, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

New reports have been released, and the news is good for teens, their parents and our families.  The teen pregnancy rate in the United States has declined by 36% between 1990 and 2002.

Since 1990, when the teen pregnancy rate peaked at over 115 pregnancies per 1,000 females aged 15-19, the rate today has fallen below 75 pregnancies.  More good news follows.

While many preach the hopelessness of teaching abstinence to sexually active teens, the statistics prove otherwise.  Hopeless?  Among sexually experienced teens, the rate for teen pregnancies declined 28% during this time period.  It is concrete validation of what other research has shown…when teens reflect on their choice to become sexually active, they are more likely than not to regret it.

We have turned the tide in America.  We are on a new course, moving in the direction of healthy teens and a healthy future for our teens.  Yet, much work remains to be done.

Today, still, there are about 750,000 teen pregnancies annually.  The costs are staggering.

Sarah Brown, Director of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy was in Phoenix this week to present an analysis of those costs.  For Arizonans, teen childbearing cost taxpayers at least $268 million in 2004…or $3,822 per teen birth.

Importantly, most of these costs are associated with negative consequences for the children of teen mothers…our next generation.  High costs for public health care, child welfare, incarceration, and lost tax revenue are all associated with children born to teens.

Add to this economic analysis the well-known costs of teen sex related to sexually transmitted diseases and the emotional and social consequences of being sexually active, and we know there is more work to be done.  The news is good.  It must be better.

When asked by her audience why other countries are more successful than the United States in preventing teen pregnancy, Sara Brown’s answer was straightforward.  In Asian countries where the rates of teen pregnancy are lowest, there is a strong cultural taboo against teens engaging in sex.  Not surprisingly, as these cultures begin to adopt western sexual standards, their teen pregnancy rates are rising.

Ms. Brown also expanded upon the need to restore cultural norms supporting sexual abstinence for teens.  She explained the importance of linking babies with healthy marriages.  The body of research today documents that healthy outcomes for children improve when they are born into families where mothers and fathers work together to raise them.

Can single parents be successful as parents?  Absolutely!  But when we consider society as a whole, we all reap the benefits of encouraging teens to delay sex…and childbearing…until they are ready to commit to a healthy, happy marriage.

Parents and educators are on a positive course correction.  Working together, we are restoring a common sense approach to sex, love, marriage and families…rebuilding a personal and cultural expectation that once was common place.

A lot of work has been done changing the course of behavior for teens regarding sex, but more has yet to be done.  Our message is on track.  Sex for teens is a risky behavior that produces unhealthy outcomes.  Or…said another way…for teens, sexual abstinence until marriage secures the healthiest outcomes for them physically, socially, emotionally and economically.

Our message is on track…our results are on track.  Now, we must stay the course.

 

June 5, 2006 – Kaiser Embraces Abstinence Education?

October 24, 2005 – TEENS AND SEX: How Many? So What?

 See Archives for past editorials.

Worst-Case Scenario

August 21, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

This is the time of year when students head off to school.  From kindergarten through college, anxious parents wave goodbye to their children as they relinquish the ever watchful parent control and trust the fate of their children to outside forces.

The newspaper reporter called me.  She was writing a story to help parents of college students…to give them help and reassurance.  How could parents guide young men and women in dealing with the sexual pressures of the college campus?

We spoke about the precautions, the sex talks, the fears, and the boundaries.  We considered the coed dorms, the student health centers, the drinking, the parties.  And we strategized.  Parents had tools to open dialogue with their students, even if these college freshmen were breaking loose from the day-to-day oversight that had guided their first 18 years of life.

Hopes were balanced with fears.  Precautions were checked with risks.  Good and bad possibilities were in a battle for influence over their students.  The obvious question had to be asked.

“Yes, parents can do a lot,” the reporter said.  “But what happens, in the worst-case scenario?”

The worst case scenario.  Her words spoke volumes to me.  After ten years of working in the field of preventing adolescent sex, I was fully aware of the worst case scenario.  Like the mythical head of Medusa, it was a simple phrase that erupts into many tentacles of bad consequences.

Worst case scenario?  Was the reporter thinking of the student who calls mom and dad to tell them they tested positive for AIDS?

Perhaps the reporter was thinking of the one in five adults who are now infected with genital herpes.  Even with a lifelong prescription for Famvir, this infection will control the lives of millions of people with regular outbreaks that can only be treated, not cured.

Maybe the reporter, as I have, has spoken with ob-gyns who have treated women as young as eighteen for cervical cancer.  A new vaccine Gardasil has been introduced to the market that prevents HPV infections, a sexually transmitted disease (STD) responsible for over 97 percent of cervical cancer.  What do parents tell their  daughters?

Or maybe the reporter had personal experience with someone close to them who had undergone an abortion in college.  My own friend was overcome with regret and depression, amplified by the boyfriend who “loved” her during sex and promptly abandoned her after the abortion he wanted.

These stories are just the tip of the iceberg.  So many stories of worst case scenarios, personalized to the individual who has to live out the scenario.  I am friends with a pregnancy counselor who prevented a post-abortion suicide.  I attended the trial of an abortion doctor who walked away from a woman patient and let her bleed to death.

Speaking with the reporter, an unexpected pause let a flood of worst case scenarios fill my mind.  I told the reporter, “I’m trying to figure out what would actually be the worst-case scenario.”

She joined me in brief silence.  “Gee, I guess there are a number of possibilities, aren’t there?”

Of course, I knew from experience that the worst case she most likely had been referring to was a phone call from college, “Mom, I’m pregnant.”  But considering this question and the many people I know who have dealt with this scenario, I could see only life and hope.

“I am old enough,” I told her, “to remember the college housing for married students and families.  Children and marriage at one time were not hostile barriers to future happiness.  Maybe discipline and patience were required.   But life was big enough for it all.”

One dear friend gave birth to her unplanned baby and chose adoption to bless the lives of a mother and father who could only wait for her generous gift.  Today, she is much more at peace with her “scenario” than those I have spoken to who regret their hasty abortion decisions made under pressure and isolation.

When did babies become the enemy?  When did they define the “worst-case scenario” for American culture?

As our children leave home, and as we continue to parent them from afar, perhaps the best gift we can give them is an understanding of the wonderful joys that come from sex that produces life.

Four years in college is a slice of their life, a time when they set the stage for their future…not just careers…but lives as mothers, fathers, parents.  The best-case scenario is a dream they can catch, if we take the time to build it.

Our fears and our hopes both have the ability to capture our mind.  Which will it be for our children?  The best-case scenario…or the worst?

 

July 11, 2005 – Medically Accurate Cowards

April 2, 2004 –  Sex Education: Spinning the Truth

 See Archives for past editorials.