The disturbing news about STDs is that many people are unaware that they are infected. Groups such as the Kaiser Family Foundation, MTV and Planned Parenthood have joined forces to encourage and support the Get Yourself Tested campaign. GYT Campaign - STD Awareness Microsite.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 19 million new STD infections occur each year in the U.S.?almost half among people 15-24 years old. And STDs are on the rise in adults age 50-70. Here is a comprehensive STD Awareness Resource Site.
Unintended consequences and ?shaming?
Our society flaunts sex and conveys a message that without love you are not whole. Yet we wrangle about condoms and point fingers at teens and women who come face-to-face with unintended consequences.? The Guttmacher Institute tells us ?nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended.?? Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States - Guttmacher Institute.
In Texas women and teens caught in the love-sex-pregnancy cycle who then seek an abortion face a mandate from politicians, a transvaginal ultrasound before pregnancy termination. Garry Trudeau took on the cause of women in his Doonesbury?which many newspapers rejected?calling the sonogram instrument ?a shaming wand.?
Physicians express their thoughts
Many physicians oppose the sonogram, saying that it is medically unnecessary, while others worry about its psychological implications.
William Hurt Sledge, M.D,, medical director of the Yale New-Haven Psychiatric Hospital, said: ?Hopefully this law will be struck down soundly and definitively by the Supreme Court. Then women can continue to live by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which granted women the right to have an abortion if they chose to do so.?
Dr. Sledge, the George and Esther Gross Professor of Psychiatry at Yale, added: ?Essentially women should have the majority say so and authority about reproductive policies.?
The CDC abortion-surveillance report says that 827,609 abortions were reported for 2007, the most recent accounting.?
Craig Malkin, Ph.D., ?a clinical psychologist and psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School, points out that after an abortion some women with trauma histories have severe stress reactions.
He says, ?The American Psychological Association?s position, based on research evidence, is that abortions do not harm women?s mental health. But if these more vulnerable women feel forced to undergo a procedure for what they consider specious reasons?we clinicians are bound to see increased psychological difficulties similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.?
But he added: ?Such symptoms are likely due to pre-existing distress and traumatic stressors in the life of the woman seeking an abortion.?
Steering clear of moral judgments
Isn?t it time for religious leaders to start talking about love and forgiveness rather than behaving like a political lobby??
And as for legislators, perhaps they feel they do their job by passing a once a year resolution about STD Awareness Month in the Senate and the House of Representatives?or touting failed abstinence programs. A report to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2007 determined that Title V abstinence education programs did not work.
With expressed zeal to protect the rights of the unborn?an always vocal campaign topic?how many legislators would be willing to adopt and love an unwanted child if the mother could be convinced to carry the baby to term?? Perhaps religious leaders and politicians who really value a right to life, should be vigorously working to prevent child abuse in this country.
And to all those who do carry the banner of awareness, education, and child protection -- we are indeed grateful.
Copyright 2012 Rita Watson / All Rights Reserved (adapted from www.ritawatson.com)
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