Playing With Teen Sex Statistics: A Lesson in Lies

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/07/21/playing-teen-statisticslesson

here are many goofy aspects to this Life Site News story arguing that because a slim majority of teenagers don’t have sex, we don’t need to teach them about contraceptive methods. Perhaps the most puzzling is why they came out with the story on July 14th, since the report came out a month and a half ago. (In classic Life Site fashion, they don’t actually link the report, for fear that a stray reader may actually read it an clue into the fact that their spin is dishonest.) Did it take the American Life League this long to craft a response? If so, you’d expect them to come up with something less transparently silly than this:

ALL says that the CDC report, entitled “Teenagers in the United States: Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Child Bearing, National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG),” debunks Planned Parenthood's constant mantra that most teens will not abstain. In particular the pro-life organization points to the words of Planned Parenthood Federation of America vice president of medical affairs, Vanessa Cullens, from a YouTube video directed toward teens: "Admit that you are a sexually active individual like most of us, and that you are going to have sex and that you need to take precautions in order to stay healthy."

The number of lies is this paragraph are astounding, a real feat in maximizing the dishonesty per syllable. As per their usual strategy, Life Site didn’t link so that you can verify their lies yourself, but I'll happily link it so you can verify. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest this is a video aimed at adolescents specifically. In fact, this video is explicitly aimed at people who have already decided to have sex or are already having sex, regardless of age.

Then there’s the suggestion that because only 42 percent of girls and 43 percent of boys ages 15 to 19 have had sex, then there’s no need whatsoever for anything but abstinence-only education, because a majority don’t need to know about contraception. This argument only works if you believe that a group of people doesn’t count unless they’re majority. Let’s apply this argument to other contexts, to see if it holds as well as Life Site seems to think.


More at the link ---

[SheilaT]

1. You could probably come up with a similar

statistic in some other area, such as since the majority of gun owners don't intend to kill anyone, there's no need to teach anyone about gun safety.

[nosmokes]

2. When your moral code and world view is based on a fairy tale book that is

thousands of years old and plagiarized from the get-go I guess your relationship w/ truth and facts is a slippery one at best, eh?

[surrealAmerican]

3. A majority of 15 to 19 year olds also don't have ...

... bank accounts, so we don't need to teach them about interest. Most of them can't vote, so there's no need to teach them about government. The list goes on and on. Think of all the education dollars we could save!

[w4rma]

4. The banksters would like that. Don't give them any ideas. (nt)