Thursday 1st December, 2005

Skyrocketing youth abortion rate in Canterbury shows, once again, that current sex education is seriously flawed

A recently released report from the Canterbury District Health Board shows that the number of girls under 16 in that region having abortions more than tripled from 2003 to 2004. This is yet another incident in a growing list of damning indictments against the effectiveness of our current sex education programs.

Since the beginning of this year we have seen reports or surveys that show that HIV infections, cases of Chlamydia and other sexual diseases, and the incidence of unsafe sexual practise and promiscuous behaviours are rising in New Zealand at an alarming rate.

Instead of a serious and comprehensive investigation into such major failures of their programs, the promoters of condom based sex education ignore the blatantly obvious and claim that what is needed is more of their seriously flawed, ideologically driven programs.

Family Life International is also extremely concerned with comments made by Christchurch GP; Dr Pippa MacKay, in relation to Canterbury’s frightening rise in underage abortions.

Today’s edition of the Christchurch Press alleges that Dr MacKay believes that “young girls coped well physically with an abortion” and that “they also often coped better psychologically because they did not tend to make the emotional connection to having a baby that women who had already given birth did.”

Such ideas simply do not measure up with the volumes of research, and with Family Life International’s years of experience in counselling post-abortive women, which shows the opposite to be true.

Just two days ago it was reported that the European Journal of Public Health had published a new 13-year study of the entire population of women in Finland that showed that; compared to women who have not been pregnant in the prior year, deaths from suicide, accidents and homicide are 248% higher in the year following an abortion.

Some young girls may not initially realise that abortion has ended the life of their unborn child, but this means absolutely nothing. It is not uncommon for the physiological effects of abortion not to fully manifest themselves until some time after the fact, or when some other later event acts as a catalyst and triggers post abortion trauma.

Dr MacKay’s comments also expose the gross hypocrisy of the abortion industry. If abortion does not end the life of a human being then how can women “make the emotional connection to having a baby” as Dr MacKay states?

How many more HIV deaths, abortions, sexual diseases, and teenage pregnancies will we accept before action is taken to correct our current approach to sex education which is producing such disastrous results?

ENDS

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