You asked... and I'm afraid I can't. People who denegrate others by claiming a moral high ground seldom hear the condescension in their own voices.

Instead, I want to talk about the concept of abstinence as panacaea... and to assert by its failure rate that it doesn't exist. I haven't statistics, just personal anecdotes; but (as my reading of the rest of this thread tells me you understand) the very core of this issue is that it is so ultimately personal.

In another (private) forum I have vented a large amount of spleen in the cause most central to my own moral code: the sanctity of the individual. I have also spent a good deal of invective against the adolescent male fallacy (which many never grow out of) which insists sex is necessary, and unhealthful if not experienced on a regular basis. Why do I set these two concepts next to each other? To understand that (I hope), I need to introduce a third, very personal fact: I have been involuntarily celibate for more than two years; it does not come without conflict, so the ideas have been in my mind a lot.

I am bothered by the offhand way abstinence is tossed around as the obvious cure-all to unwanted pregnancies. "Just say No to Sex" is easy only when one is never given an option to say "yes". It is only 100% effective in the best of all possible worlds - which this is not - where everyone is capable of, and willing to, take "No" for an answer.

I'm not just speaking of rape - well actually, I am, but I'm using a much broader definition than violent sexual assault. I maintain that any non-consensual sex is rape, regardless of circumstances. Even in this enlightened century (sarcasm intended), the institution of marriage still carries the implication of droit de signeur: the right of one partner to receive sex from the other at whim. That it is almost always the male demanding of the female is the subject for another post... Society still expects compliance within marriage, and still allows for the dissolution of a marriage for non-compliance. On the other hand, many women (and even a few men) find themselves trading sex for peace in the home, even if sex is fervently not wanted, because the dissolution of the marriage is impossible for other reasons... in other words, prostitution disguised as consensual sex.

Outside marriage, 'screw anything that moves' (your phrase, Tom) has been around as long as there have been more than two available males and females. It is most definitely not a product of modern society. I might support the notion that modern societal expectations - about "dating", for instance, among adults as well as adolescents - faclitate the pressure for sex as an outcome (so to speak) more than previous historical epochs... but I am not convinced that our times are uniquely guilty.

And then there is the biological imperative, against which I rail on intellectual grounds, yet nevertheless feel. How many millions of couples in the history of humanity have been "carried away"? Impossible to answer. But add them to the statistics for: leaky condoms, improperly inserted diaphragms or sponges, pharmaceutical quality control, inebriation, ignorance, poverty and all the other forms of failed birth control...

... and thank enlightened Western democracy that at least all of the women we could possibly know personally, who might be forced to choose, have a choice to make. It is always painful, never taken lightly, and never without personal moral aftermath - but at least the choice is there.

Fox