Author Archives: jtjim

Teen Pregnancy: What’s the Problem?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

January 3, 2005

“Did you know? The only 100% foolproof way to prevent pregnancy is not to have sex?”

This is front page news heralded by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy on its website home page.  Recognizing the significance of America’s problem with teen pregnancies, they have set a goal to “reduce the rate of teen pregnancy by one-third between 1996 and 2005.”  This is the final year…a time to measure success…or failure.

The National Campaign website goes to great lengths to explain the urgency of this goal.  “A basic tenet of the Campaign is that reducing the nation’s rate of teen pregnancy is one of the most strategic and direct means available to improve overall child well-being and, in particular, to reduce persistent child poverty.”

Connecting cause to effect, their website points an official finger at the cause of teen pregnancies…having sex.  Ah…well…yeah…mmm…but…well, then what?

So…you don’t have sex?  And you don’t get pregnant?  This is news?

Ah…well…yeah…mmm…but…sex…well…then…what?  You don’t have sex?  Forever?  A lump forms in our throat.  Forever?  No sex?

The problem with the problem of teen pregnancy in America is our reluctance to deal with the solution.  We get as far as telling teens to not have sex…telling them this will prevent teen pregnancy.  But we have yet to settle as a nation on the time when they get to have sex.

If teens are going to be willing to abstain from having sex, we owe them a standard for the defining time when having sex is OK.  When can they start having sex?

There is a long list of answers that have been trotted out over the years…you can have sex…

…when you’re in love

…when you’re responsible

…when you’re mature

…or my favorite…

…when you’re ready…to have sex.

For thirty years, giving teens approval to have sex at the moment when they felt responsible and mature and ready, we pushed teen pregnancy rates to an all-time high in 1990 of 117 pregnancies per 1000 girls ages 15-19.

Then a change began.  In the early 1990s, maverick trend-setting teachers, bucking the “truisms” of sexual “enlightenment,” began to teach students the truth.  Sex causes pregnancy.  And if you take this truth seriously, the only time to begin having sex is when you are ready to bear the responsibilities of being pregnant…giving birth…and raising a child…when you are married.

Doctors and legislators began to connect the dots between the cause and the problem of teen pregnancy.  In 1996, Congress allocated its first small sums of money to encourage innovative educators to find effective ways to teach this truth to students and to help them achieve success in remaining sexually abstinent until marriage.

In 2000, the last year reported on the National Campaign’s records for teen pregnancies, we can be heartened by signs of success.  From the high of 117 pregnancies per thousand in 1990, we achieved a low of 84 pregnancies per thousand in 2000.

Teens are getting the message.  They are responding.  But is this enough?

It is 2005, and we are reaching for the prize.  If we are to reach the National Campaign’s goal of a reduction by one-third in teen pregnancies from 1996 to 2005, we are looking at fewer than 65 pregnancies per 1000 teen girls.

If we truly desire to reach this goal, we must reflect once more with urgency on the messages we give teens about when to not have sex…and when to have sex.

When do we want them to have babies?  When do we want our children raising our grandchildren?  How many of us will feel blessed if our children are lucky enough to be unified with a spouse…together as mother and father, husband and wife…two parents who love each other and are committed to building an enduring relationship for the benefit of their children?

If we want to solve the problem of teen pregnancy, we will have to do more than tell teens when not to have sex.  We will have to set the standards for having sex…abstinence…until marriage…a good choice for this generation…and the generation of babies they will bring into the world.

August 13, 2004:    Only

October 22, 2004:   Bringing Poppa Home

See Archives for past editorials.

New Year’s Resolution: Another Kind of Diet

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 27, 2004

Is there anything we haven’t eaten in the past week: ham, tamales, potatoes, chocolate, brandy, wine…and…

On the way to eating, there is tasting, munching, nibbling and sipping.  Whatever you call it, the food goes in…and settles in for a long winter’s nap…right around the waist.

One week later, stuffed to the gills, we must face the truth.  A diet is in order.  The belt is tight, and we are too bottom-heavy to lift out of the recliner.  Eating may be natural, but it certainly has its limits.

Guided by New Year’s Resolutions, millions of Americans begin to set boundaries on what we put in our mouth.  We post calorie counts on the refrigerator door, we empty the kitchen of temptation and we carry boxed chocolates to the office.

Indulging at the banquet table comes at a cost.  Anyone laboring to shed a few “holiday pounds” knows the painful and difficult process of “paying for our pleasure.”  Food is only one item on a long list of indulgences…each with a cost.

For the past thirty years, we have winked at sexual indulgences, and our children are paying the price.  An epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases and thousands of children raised by single moms are testimony to the need for a diet of a different kind.

Abstinence education is about more than sex.  It is a diet for the soul.  It is about making the connections for our children between the indulgence and the consequence.  It offers children hope because it tells them they don’t have to pay a price if they can learn restraint.

Abstinence education is about the dreams of our children, about the quality of their lives both now and forever.  It works to give young people the imagination, confidence and tools to fulfill their dreams.  Sex is a part of the dream.  And so is restraint.

Debates over sex education continue to rage.  Millions of dollars are being poured into campaigns to paint abstinence educators as fear-filled, shame-based fools.  After all, one condom-friendly sexpert lectured her audience…sex is natural…like eating.

This was the major point she wanted to make?  A woman with over twenty years experience in teaching our children about sex?

She turned to face an abstinence teacher and lashed out in her most indignant voice.  “We want our children to celebrate sex.  We don’t need them to be fearful and filled with shame.  We want them to feel at home with their sexuality.  After all, sex is perfectly natural.”

She smiled…smugly.  She had trumped any challenge to acting on a sexual urge.  Well…after thirty years of reassuring our children that sex is natural, these sexperts have achieved their goal…and more.

No fear and no shame…this goes a long way to explain Superbowl XXXVIII and its international show of bumping and grinding center stage…pelvic thrusts set to music…complete with one naked breast.  Not to mention MTV.  And this sexpert wants us to believe the most pressing thing to teach our children is that sex is natural?

Eating is natural.  But it is only healthy when it is managed, limited, and held inside the bounds of medical realities by exercising self control.  Eating is not to be feared.  But it is to be restrained.  If not, why bother with New Year’s Resolutions?

Sex, just like dining at a banquet table filled with delectable dishes, is a passion best enjoyed when boundaries are observed.  Natural desires have natural consequences.  This is the truth from which we build New Year’s Resolutions…both for the kitchen and for the bedroom.

No fear.  No shame.  Teaching our children restraint is not about teaching shame.  Restraint is their ultimate liberation from the very real fear of paying a consequence more severe than a few extra holiday pounds around the waist.

Our children need more than the simplistic reassurance that sex is natural.  They need the perfection of nature’s ultimate truth:  Our greatest hopes and dreams are more often than not fulfilled with a simple resolution of self-control made…and kept.

Happy New Year.

April 16, 2004:   One Stop Shopping

April 30, 2004:  Condoms: A Failure to Protect

May 28, 2004:   What If

See Archives for past editorials.

 

The Peterson Verdict: Truth Reclaimed

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 20, 2004

Twelve people, ordinary citizens, accepted the ultimate challenge of a civilized society.  They sat through five months of grueling testimony in the Scott Peterson trial in order to defend truth.

There is something immediate and real about sitting in the jury box, examining bits of concrete, clothing, and recorded phone conversations, searching for truth.  When the prosecution passed the peasant maternity blouse thought to have been worn by Laci shortly before her murder, one juror burst into tears.  Literally touching the truth can be painful.

The Peterson verdict makes me think back to another trial I witnessed firsthand in 2001, where Dr. John Biskind was accused of letting his patient die.  Like Laci, his patient LouAnne was pregnant.

In order to prove their case against Dr. Biskind, prosecutors needed to prove the age of LouAnne’s baby.  Twelve jurors focused on a description of the proper use of ultrasound to measure the widest part of the baby’s temple, slightly above the eyes.  The expert witness assured them further measurements of the baby’s waist and femur could be used to confirm an estimated age.

The jury listened intently.  The truth seemed to be that LouAnne’s baby had been 25 to 26 weeks old, at the age of viability, when, under ordinary circumstances the baby could have survived outside the mother’s womb.  But these were not ordinary circumstances.

Scott Peterson and Dr. Biskind were both convicted by juries.  Both prosecutors won their cases.  Two trials, two mothers, two babies, and four deaths.   But oh, the difference in truth.

You see, as tragic as his death was, at least Connor had a name.  He is remembered in the hearts of people who wanted him, and he is honored by a nation who grieved when his little body was found on the shore of San Francisco Bay.  Laci’s baby was a victim.  And Scott will pay the price for his murder.

LouAnne’s baby was measured and counted and aged.  But he…or she…was never named.  Prosecutors in the Biskind trial were under a strict order from the judge not to make the trial about the baby.  Just figure out how old “it” was…and then move on.

Later in the trial, when prosecutors described the death of “it”, they explained how the broken leg bone of the baby could have ripped a hole in LouAnne’s uterus as the doctor pulled it out.  And the metal tool that broke the leg bone…and crushed the skull of “it”…that sharp metal tool might have cut into LouAnne and caused the uterine wound that made her bleed to death.

The Peterson trial was about two people, Laci and Connor, who each died a brutal death.

The Biskind trial was about one person, LouAnne…and “It”.  LouAnne died a painful and undeserved death, and Dr. Biskind was convicted of this crime.  “It” never died, because “It” was supposed to die.

When “It” was measured at the trial…her little head, her tummy, her legs and arms…she was a fully-formed picture on an ultrasound with a beating heart.  But when time came to describe her death in the trial, she became a fetus…a linguistic charade that snuffed out her humanity, a life summed up by a medical examiner in three words of dispassionate science…a “Product of Conception”…or more simply said…“It.”

Is this the truth that we require of juries?  Is the truth a matter of declaring what you want, even if the evidence proves otherwise?  If you name him Conner, then he was killed.  If she was only an “It,” then she never was…and she never died.

This week, just as Americans work to make peace with the conclusion of the Peterson trial, the brutal truth we work so hard to avoid has been savagely resurrected on the front page of national newspapers.

Another mother, Bobby Jo Stinnett, was murdered.  Her fetus?  Her product of conception?  Her “It”?  It lived.

Bobby Jo died.   But because someone wanted her fetus enough to kill her for it, to take it by force from the womb, a grateful father has been reunited with his baby…Victoria Jo Stinnett.

In Kansas, another jury will eventually convene in another trial, with another long trail of evidence leading to the conviction of a murderer.  And as the jury weighs the evidence of this unspeakable crime, our nation will once again be faced with a serious truth that refuses to die.

The definition of life is not fluid…changeable from one trial to the next…based on whether we wanted to receive the life…or not.  Life, like truth, exists of its own volition…separate from our juries and verdicts…life is.  And truth is.

No amount of evidence and testimony will ever be enough to reach truth if we close our eyes and hearts.  The greatest challenge for a jury in a civilized society is not to determine truth, but to open its eyes to the truth in plain sight…and accept it.

 

See Archives for past editorials.

June 25, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

December 10, 2004:  The Best Part of Snuggling

 

The Best Part of Snuggling

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 10, 2004

It is black outside.  Soft pits and pats against the window…rain…and I pull the blanket closer, sinking back into the arm of the recliner.  A hot cup of tea rests at my elbow.  It is my favorite time of the day.

In the darkness, I think back to other special mornings, twenty years ago.  Wrapped in my green plush robe, rocking back and forth, it was many a quiet dark morning when I would slowly sense the presence of another person.  My son, a toddler of three, had padded into the living room, up next to my chair, with his small eyes fixed on me.

Wordlessly, in agreement that the peace of the morning was large enough for both of us, I would open my robe.  Knowing what to do, he climbed onto my lap, and I pulled the robe around us, a snuggling of two.  In many a dark early morning, so many years ago, we kept the peace together.

Snuggling…it’s hard to know the best part.  Is it the dark, the quiet, the soft touch of a hand on the shoulder?  Is it protection, comfort, acknowledgement, relationship?  Safety?  Is it the promised assurance between human beings that what happens to you will happen to me because I share your heartbeat?

I was jarred to attention last week.  I was asked to consider the first time I ever snuggled, my earliest snuggle of life, and the question brought me up short.

Was it inside the warm white blanket wrapped around me as I was laid into the arms of my mother in the hospital?  Or was it later…close against her as she nursed me, her firstborn?  Maybe my father was the first to snuggle me, peering intently, measuring the smallest eyes and lips of a baby…his…held in the crook of his arm.

Maybe…but the magic of science has opened the window on snuggling, and I think it must surely have been weeks, even months before my birth, when I knew I was safe, a knowing of safety available to all living beings even before they can explain it in words.

Surely, weeks before birth, wrapped into a bundle of baby, between my bursts of pushing and kicking against the walls of the womb…surely there were quiet moments shared with my mother where we snuggled and dreamt.  Already at this stage I had fine hair, teeth, and eyelash fringes around eyelids that opened and closed…and opened again…for infant eyes that looked around.  When she spoke, I knew my mother’s voice…outside…serenading me as I waited my time.

Certainly, even weeks earlier, when the womb was large enough for me to swim and stretch and turn somersaults, I took time to rest and sleep and snuggle.  Inside my mother’s quiet belly, worn out from my infant gymnastics, curling my toes, I would have stuck my thumb into my mouth and felt the safety of darkness…protected and safe.

One thing is certain.  I know I snuggled long before I made my first appearance under bright hospital lights.  No matter what some want to claim I was back then…a blob, a mass of cells, an embryo, a fetus…a product of conception…I was, without a doubt, a flourishing child of my parents, thriving and growing.

Today, cloaked in a battle of terminology, creating labels devoid of humanity, there are those who wish us to forget that we once snuggled in the womb.  They will not have their way with me.

I claim my existence, refusing to be dehumanized at any stage of development.  Supported by the miraculous development of four-dimensional ultrasound, doctors and parents can follow the development of babies like me.  At eight weeks, I was fully formed, a human of one inch in length, every organ present, with a strong beating heart.

At nine weeks, my fingerprints were already engraved, and my fingers were ready to grasp an object placed in my palm.

At ten weeks, my body was sensitive to touch. I squinted and swallowed. I puckered my brow and frowned.

And then I smiled…at eleven weeks.  And if I could smile, it is certain that I smiled because I felt safe, snuggled inside, nurtured and protected…my life ahead to be enjoyed and cherished.

So many years later, watching the dawn break on the mountains outside the window, I follow the beads of rain that trickle down the glass.  Another beautiful day outside, crisp and damp.  The garden will sparkle when the sun breaks through the clouds.  I take a sip of tea and pull the blanket up under my chin.

My son is grown now, and I must snuggle alone.  It’s enough, but it’s not the best there is.

If there really is a best thing to snuggling, this would have to be it…revived by thoughts of long ago…a bundle wrapped together, two of us sharing the morning…the best thing of all surely being the promised assurance between human beings that what happens to you will happen to me…because I share your heartbeat.

 *************************************

DEDICATION 

This column is dedicated to the many committed educators who are not afraid to teach our children about their earliest days of life inside the womb.  May these faithful teachers be encouraged in their work.

 

See Archives for past editorials.

 June 25, 2004:  Unplanned Joy

Waxman Report: He Got What He Paid For

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 3, 2004

With great fanfare, this week Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Ca) released a report on sex education, “The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs.”  It purports to be an analysis of abstinence programs.

After poring through the 26-page document with a yellow highlighter, it became clear that “The Report” is the tip of an iceberg.  And as with all icebergs, the most tantalizing parts of the report lie under the water, out of sight, and unreported by mainstream news.  Get ready to take some depth soundings on what lies below.  It’s not a pretty sight.

Sounding One:  Henry Waxman ordered the report.  Why?  Because he wanted to.  Waxman’s own paid staff prepared the report…for their boss…who hires and fires them.

Sounding  Two:  Henry Waxman already knew what he wanted the report to say before he ordered it.  Since first elected in 1974, he has amassed a sizable and telling voting record.  Waxman receives a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and NOW…earned for his steadfast support of abortion on demand and without restriction and of same-sex marriage.

“On the votes that the Planned Parenthood considered to be the most important from 1995 to 2001,” says Vote-Smart.org, “Representative Waxman voted their preferred position 100 percent of the time.”  Planned Parenthood has, from the beginning, stood vehemently in opposition to abstinence education funded by Congress and spends thousands of dollars each year lobbying against it.

Sounding Three:  As we dive lower into darker waters, reading “The Report” in the dim light…don’t expect any further information from Waxman or his staff.  They aren’t talking.  Well…you can call their media person…and IF she calls you back…well…I’m still waiting.

Sounding Four:  We are in the dark waters now, where it’s easy to hide an iceberg behind thick oily slicks of footnotes.  Indeed, at times in “The Report” there are more footnotes than report.  But we live in an age where it is possible to fill two pages with footnotes in defense of adults having sex with children.  We must keep our eyes on the berg.  What is “The Report” really about?

“The Report” claims a “scarcity of comprehensive sex education courses” and links this to lack of funding.  Hmmm.  What about the reported $254 million in government grants and contracts to Planned Parenthood for 2002-2003?  Or the $288 million in abortion/health clinic income for the same period?  Did the report attempt to identify funding streams that direct money to Planned Parenthood and others, available for their condom-based sex education?  I called Waxman’s office to inquire…and left a message…I’m still waiting.

“The Report” attempts to “prove” abstinence education is ineffective.  Yet, Douglas Kirby, the expert cited in their own footnotes gave a lengthy presentation in Phoenix last September which may surprise Waxman.  Dr. Kirby says we have no reason to conclude that abstinence programs don’t work.  Reiterating what he has said many times over the years, Kirby said, “The jury is still out.”  In fact, he said he expects in the coming years that studies will demonstrate the effectiveness of abstinence education.

“The Report” literally drips with research citations on every page.  Yet, they missed a few…the ones that demonstrate success of abstinence education programs in Denmark, SC and in Monroe County, NY.  Maybe they missed these and other studies…or maybe they wanted to miss reports on the successes of abstinence education.

“The Report” goes to great lengths to “explain” condoms.  Why?  In 2001, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in conjunction with the CDC, released a detailed summary report on a comprehensive review of condom research. The panel of medical experts finally demonstrated the lack of evidence for broad “safe-sex” claims based on condoms.  Anyone working to unravel the truth about condoms would do well to bypass Waxman’s obfuscation and check the NIH report.

“The Report” claims some programs are inaccurate in linking pregnancy to “touching another person’s genitals.”  However, they fail to note that abstinence educators have had to undo the long list of lies associated with some condom-based programs.  These programs have gone so far as to coin the term “outercourse”…versus intercourse…teaching students in contradiction to medical realities that any and all “outercourse” is fun and safe, including naked body to body eroticism, just short of actual intercourse.

“The Report” objects to abstinence programs and their views of “when life begins.”  Waxman’s staff might be enlightened by a text, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th Edition:  “Human development begins at fertilization.”  Of course, this might be a disturbing revelation for Waxman and his supporters who have no problem with partial birth abortion, the destruction of babies just nano-seconds from birth.

“The Report” objects to information about “the physical and psychological effects of legal abortion.”  Hmmm.  Waxman’s staff gives no credence to any negative impact of abortion discussed by abstinence educators. So…are the only effects of abortion positive?  I’d like to talk with his staff about that one…if they ever call back.

“The Report” objects to abstinence program efforts to discuss male/female differences and marriage.  And here is where we hit the crux of many an objection to abstinence education from people like Waxman.  Linking healthy sex, with healthy male/female relationships inside of marriage, where having babies is a joyful occasion…planned or unplanned…this is an affront to those who would want our children to embrace same-sex sex and same-sex marriage.

In a report that claims to seek and destroy “errors and distortions”, this short list of errors and distortions is unforgivable.  Somehow, though, I doubt Waxman or his staff are seeking forgiveness.

I think they are seeking what they got…“The Report”…a mass of errors and distortions constructed by people who knew what they wanted to find before they looked.

No wonder Waxman is touting “The Report” with such enthusiasm.  He got what he paid for.

 

See Archives for past editorials.

March 26, 2004:   Abstinence: The Real Deal

April 2, 2004:  Sex Education: Spinning the Truth