Abstinence-only, Abortion, and Science Policies of the Bush Administration

Twenty-five years ago, the power of Rightist, Fundamentalist religious groups became evident in the actions of our Federal government. Notably, the Adolescent Family Life Act was passed by the Congress. It was designed to provide large amounts of funding to promote chastity education in our schools, religiously conservative churches, and elsewhere. Programming began to teach public-school children to oppose abortions and the rely on abstinence-only sex practices. In addition, businesses were formed to promote such attitudes, e.g., Sex Respect and Teen-Aid, and became robust and profitable.
In 1996, the Congress appropriated funds approximating $135 million/year for abstinence-only sex education. In FY 2005, The Congress put $170 million more into such education, and states were copying programs and imposing regulations on teaching content and practices. More than $1 billion of federal assistance has been spent on abstinence-only programs.
Let’s face reality! Abstinence-only is inadequate to cope with the basic forces in human beings. Adolescent women who pledged abstinence until marriage in public meetings with their fathers standing beside them are failing a significant number of times to keep their vows, have pre-marital sex, and become pregnant. Additionally, starkly clear data show sex drives cannot be controlled in even more solemn rituals by devout men who pledge life-long celibacy in their vows for priesthood in the Catholic Church. Massive numbers of priests are failing to uphold these pledges to religious purity through celibacy. The Catholic Church has been damaged morally and financially weakened by thousands of legal fees and cash settlements and by negative media coverage as a result.
What are the forces that make sexual abstinence so difficult? We humans inherently have two relevant forces embedded in our basic constitutions. The first is the archetypal imperative for procreation – to be parents, an urge more prominent in women – and females of all species. One example is that we need to watch out for a mother’s passionate protection of her offspring! The second is a pair of comparatively small molecules, steroid hormones far more potent than most people appreciate; realistic living demands recognition of their power to dominate human behavior. In males, the hormone is testosterone; in females, it is estrogen. Listen to the lament lyrics of Country Music regarding lonely lovers bereft of their departed loves and note the media accounts of males outraged when their female mates jilt them to appreciate the sex-drive strength in males. Athletes are now using testosterone to bulk up their psychology, body sizes, and performances – harder to detect because these are naturally occurring substances; for example, this year’s Tour de France winner, Floyd Landis, had high testosterone levels during the race on the first sample tested, according to reports today.
Where does the current Bush administration stand on women’s rights in general? A clear synopsis is given by Kevin Phillips in his provocative and highly documented book, The American Theocracy; see especially pages 365-375. The most shocking are his two reports from 2002. First, in an international conference in Bangkok, a U.S. abstinence policy initiative was rejected by a 32-1 vote. The second was at a UN Special Session on Children where the U.S. failed to gain passage of its abstinence-only initiative, although it was supported by Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and the Vatican; world opinion noted the partial overlap with Islamic countries and militants. Phillips details other areas of a pervading “soft” Bush position on issues pertaining to women. It is a sad and disappointing report. The Bush administration had taken domestic policy positions and attempted to extend them into international policies, and many nations rejected them.
One of the other striking cases is the Bush stance on abortion especially when coupled with abstinence-only, a vicious pairing. The Religious Right is adamantly opposed to abortion, the thrust being “right to life” for the fetus. The flip side of the coin is consideration for mothers who are boxed into completing an unwanted pregnancy to have an unwanted child. The life-long impacts on the mother may alter and limit her entire life. Pregnant mothers also deserve respect.
Where have these influences come from? Jimmy Carter makes it very clear in his book, Our Endangered Values. He states, as do Phillips and numerous other writers of recently issued books, that the source is the Religious Right, spearheaded particularly by the policies of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), that are dominating Bush policies. In his Chapter 9, Carter recounts how he and others abhorred their denomination’s position on women’s rights so much that he, his church, and many other congregations separated themselves from the SBC in protest.
This orientation is what is meant by Phillips’ terminology “The American Theocracy.” Ending this unfortunate experiment in church-state commingling is needed as soon as possible! To do so may mean loss of control of the Congress and the White House by Republicans in the 2006 and 2008 elections. The factors that could allow a continuation of these policies would be the lack of new and different Republican leadership, continuing apathy of many voters, and lack of charismatic Democrat candidates who have been missing for years. Clearly, voters need to be saying and voting their minds for a new overarching direction that will lead to new strength in our democracy and renewed respect for American foreign policy throughout the world.
It is painful to see U.S. positions on women’s rights so closely aligned to the religions of premodern societies. What is the reason for this unfortunate congruity? It is that the concepts of the radically fundamentalist Right are largely premodern, too: disdain for women’s rights, anti-science positions, penchants for warfare rather than diplomacy, and too little feeling for how efficient it is to be compassionate to millions of people living in poverty, ignorance, and suffering. All of these positions have shown up regularly in policies of the Bush administration.
Let’s hope, work, and vote for different policies in the years ahead!