cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/19/premarital.sex.ap/index.html … premarital sex is painted as good because 95% of people are doing it. … Guttmacher, i think, is in the pocket of Planned Parenthood, … this study was designed to keep them in business. …
I thought that the article by the Associated Press (AP) was balanced: giving both views toward abstinence and toward birth control.
" … Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. … Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. … ‘It would be more effective," Finer said, "to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active – which nearly everyone eventually will.’
Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defended the abstinence-only approach for teenagers. … he said. "The longer one delays, the fewer lifetime sex partners they have, and the less the risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease.’
He insisted there was no federal mission against premarital sex among adults.
‘Absolutely not,’ Horn said. ‘The Bush administration does not believe the government should be regulating or stigmatizing the behavior of adults.’
Horn said he found the high percentages of premarital sex cited in the study to be plausible, and expressed hope that society would not look askance at the small minority that chooses to remain abstinent before marriage.
However, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group which strongly supports abstinence-only education, said she was skeptical of the findings.
‘Any time I see numbers that high, I’m a little suspicious,’ she said. ‘The numbers are too pat.’"
I know that Alan Guttmacher was a former president of Planned Parenthood. Undoubtedly, pre-marital sex does much to make Planned Parenthood profitable, unless they are not-for-profit; though, I know from those whom I have met that support Planned Parenthood–they have a genuine belief that what they are doing is good, and the most effective means available to stop abortions, to stop unintended pregnancies. Undoubtedly the genuine interest of some in Planned Parenthood is profit, but quite honestly most of them I think are sincerely interested in justice, not profitability.
In anycase, it would seem with many elements in our culture that the norm is pre-marital sex–this to me means nothing with respect to it being either acceptable, or unacceptable: it simply has the appearance of being a norm within our culture.