Sin and sex, politics and religion -- a volatile mix

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By RITA WATSON

The Providence Journal

It is always perplexing in the world of love and forgiveness when value judgments, morals, sin and sex become embroiled in politics and religion. Policies that should be discussed rationally often resemble a prize fight between "them" and "us."

Recent controversial Doonesbury cartoons came on the heels of a political furor with the issue of contraception coverage for employees in Catholic institutions. We are a society that 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 pregnancy.

I would like to put in a good word for condoms, which protect against both pregnancy and the serious public-health risk of sexually transmitted diseases. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 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 ages 50-70.

New research from the University of California, San Francisco, finds that young people are engaging in sexual activity as early as Grade 9. And a major report to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2007 determined that Title V abstinence-education programs did not work. Nonetheless, politicians cannot seem to stand back when it comes to issues of sex.

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 an abortion. Garry Trudeau took on the cause of women in his Doonesbury cartoons, calling the sonogram instrument "a shaming wand."

Alas, there is no "shaming room" in Texas for men who fail to use condoms.

Many physicians oppose the sonogram, saying that it is medically unnecessary, while others worry about its psychological implications.

William Sledge, 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."

Sledge added, "Essentially, women should have the majority say-so and authority about reproductive policies."

Whatever their expressed zeal to protect the rights of the unborn, 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 politicians and religious institutions should go into the surrogate-mother business -- the CDC abortion-surveillance report says that 827,609 abortions were reported for 2007, the most recent accounting.

Craig Malkin, 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."

As someone who could easily have been barefoot and pregnant her entire life, I do not advocate pregnancy termination. But I favor politicians staying out of the business of conception and contraception. And as for religious leaders -- please, can we hear more compassion and less hell and damnation? When talking about abortion, where is the sensitivity to women in the congregation who felt they had no other choice? "Love one another as I have loved you" -- isn't that a key message of Christianity?

The Rev. David L. Stokes Jr., a Catholic priest and a professor of theology at Providence College, believes that "priests do need to witness Catholic teaching, but without looking like one more political pressure group. In terms of public discourse, the question is, how can this be talked about in a rational way? If you do offend, do so for all the right reasons."

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