Abstinence Only Fails?

Over the weekend I received an email from what I supposed was a reader of my blog. The English was not exactly broken, but the note's syntax was bad enough to instantly make me suspect he was an expatriated oil sheikh looking for someone to launder his money, keeping 90% for my efforts of course. Much to my surprise, it was a serious request. It was short, only two sentences long, and was a promo for joining him in supporting sex education. 

Now, whether we need more sex education, I'll leave for the social scientists to debate. However, what made me laugh once I'd ingested the note was his opening sentence. It read, "I came across your site while looking for resources and blogs that have referenced abstinence only fails [sic, emphasis mine]". This statement coupled with his request for joining him on his campaign to raise either funding or awareness for reproductive health and sex education made me laugh out loud. It was painfully obvious that he had never read my blog. The header alone would have clued him in to the fact that my blog is about anything BUT sex education or reproductive health. He'd probably just did a Googled search including the word abstinence and sent me the blind, blanket email he sends to all "qualified" bloggers. 

Afterwards, though, my mind, as it is wont to do, wondered about his phrase, "abstinence only fails." It's horrible English, and the meaning is very obscure and ambiguous. But for whatever reason, maybe I was just bored that day, I couldn't dismiss it. Surely he didn't mean it's the only method of birth control which fails? That would be demonstrably false as I'll rationally, and easily, show below. Next I tried, "always fails" meaning humans just won't reliably use it. While that one may be true in many ways, some how I didn't think that was his meaning either. "Always fails" is first cousin to the idea that abstinence is the only method which doesn't produce (pardon the ironic pun) effective results. So, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and rejected that interpretation too. 

My best guess is that he wanted to reject abstinence because of its usual moorings to religious ideals. Ideals typically painted by the major media as being somehow, useless, oppressive, or out of date. Or maybe he just thinks it dangerous and unreliable because its power for prevention lies only in self control, a scarce commodity in most people.  

Regardless of his meaning, I analyzed the statement as written, "abstinence only fails." I let my mind wonder through the ages of human history, at least the parts I have any knowledge of, and I determined that I could only think of one instance in all of heterosexual reproductive history where a woman, and a virgin at that, became pregnant without the aid of a male sperm, either by sexual intercourse or other implantation of sperm into her ovum. Talk about laden with religious implications, that was one exception to the rule!  Now, to me, any procedure which has only one possible "failure" in 6,000 years of recorded heterosexual, reproduction history, and a very questionable failure at that, seems like a long way from "only fails". Maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but I can't see why abstinence is not the best method for preventing reproduction, albeit a very agonizing one - pardon once again the pun. Condoms can break, the pill, while 99% effective, still fails at times. I have a wonderfully witty niece I can display as testimony to that fact. Rhythm, gels, barriers of other sorts can let us down. But keeping male and female genitalia apart seems a no brainer if preventing reproduction alone is the goal.

Now I'm not campaigning for abstinence as a major method of birth control at all. I have no agenda here. I just think that abstinence, like the death penalty, when implemented, deters pregnancy 100% of the time it is used. And regardless of what one thinks of the effectiveness of the death penalty on other potential criminals (again no agenda here, I'll allow the social scientists to duke it out over this one too), rationally, once one executes a criminal, it de facto renders him incapable of committing future crimes (dead men not only don't tell tales, they also don't do anything else either - ok, they can stink, but you get my point). So also, not having sex, de facto, with one questionable exception during the past 6 millennia, renders heterosexual reproduction impossible. 

If any of these things were bouncing between synapses in my correspondent's head, it sounds like a failure of reason more than a failure of funding or awareness. Of course, what my solicitor most likely wanted was to prevent pregnancy while enjoying human sexuality.You know, having ones pie and eating it too. In that case, and only in that case, can I see abstinence only failing. I wish him well, but will not be joining him on his quest.

I just hope that some day he'll drop by and take a read. What an eye opening experience that will be!