Wednesday, September 12, 2007 Literatus: The path of abstinence By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T. Breakthroughs
AMERICAN writer-broadcaster Garrison Keillor has this to say in his essay Winter, which is found in his book Lake Wobegon Days: “Ha! Easy for nuns to talk about giving up things. That’s what they do for a living.”
The most difficult thing about abstinence is the idea of taking away something you are very fascinated with.
Strictly speaking, it is deprivation. And deprivation is not the reason why people compete in their jobs and succeed. Working hard is meant to gain something, not lose something.
Abstinence and deprivation are counter-cultural in a society that is increasingly profit-oriented. In a manner of saying, who goes into business with the sole purpose of losing money? Who works hard in order to starve to death?
However, abstinence from sex is considered the only effective way of preventing infections (like acquired immune deficiency syndrome or Aids, and other transmissible diseases), unwanted pregnancy, and unplanned marriages.
International organizations—government, non-government, and religious—push for it. Individuals apparently push it away. How effective is abstinence really?
A recent review of 13 trials involving 15,940 participants was conducted by a team. It was headed by Kristen Underhill of the Center for Evidence-Based Intervention at the University of Oxford (UK).
The study reviewed 30 electronic databases of prospective studies on “abstinence only programs” for Aids prevention in high-income countries, involving typically adolescent participants in schools, community centers, family homes, and faith-based organizations mostly in the US.
The results, published in the British Medical Journal (August 2007), indicate that sexual abstinence only programs for prevention of infection, or pregnancy did not decrease or increase sexual risk among youths in high-income countries in terms of unprotected vaginal sex, number of partners, condom use, or sexual initiation.
A trial of 662 adolescents even found that abstinence only programs made the youth less likely to report ever having had sex; thus making them less accessible to counseling.
In short, institutional abstinence programs failed to achieve their goal. Abstinence may still be an effective preventive measure, but only when it makes sense to its audience.
Talking about abstinence is not to motivate action. Some lessons need to be experienced so it can be learned. Knowing the path is different from walking the path. Not even figures can prove the path. “If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving,” observed British broadcaster-writer Clement Freud, “you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer.”
Most people prefer to live their short lives than to live a long, colorless one.
