Where did we get such sex negative beliefs (about masturbation) in the first place?
A. From Christianity, which evolved as a very sex-negative religion. For example, the biblical Jesus taught that the sin of adultery was committed in a man’s heart if he looked at a woman with lust (Matt. 5:27-8).
The total financial budget of all those organizations in the United States in 2010 that educationally and politically campaign for humanistic societies, gay equality, death with dignity, abortion choice, separation of church and state, plus sex education, evolution education, and climate change education runs in the low tens of millions of dollars. . .In stark contrast is America’s Christian Right. Campus Crusade for Christ in 2010 raised around $500 million!! Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network/Regent University raised over $350 million!
Since the early 1980s, the Christian Right has been waging a massive political, propaganda and legal war against separation of church and state. They have been undermining the art of negotiation, empathy, compromise and even democracy, itself, in favor of a quasi-theocracy with inflexible religious dogmas codified into law. They have been using their biblical world-view version of both physical reality and of morality to justify aggressively blocking many important scientific, medical and social programs.
Since the 1970′s, rape victims have often been immediately given several ordinary birth control pills to avoid pregnancy. This worked most of the time and became known as the “morning after pill”. Today, there is a specifically formulated “pill”, a high dose of a synthetic hormone that can be used by women within 72 hours after unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy. EC is about 75% successful in preventing a pregnancy that would have occurred otherwise.
In 2000, 12 years after RU-486 (a.k.a. Mifepristone or the abortion pill) became available in France, the U.S Food and Drug Administration finally approved it (with several restrictions) for the early medical termination of pregnancies. By 2008 medical abortions accounted for about one-fourth of all abortions nationwide.
Why the 12 year delay? Because since the late 1970s there has been a “civil war” of sorts in the U.S. over abortion. There have been bombings, shootings, death threats, clinic destruction and physicians murdered. Anti-choice literature continues to claim that it’s no coincidence that RU-486 was produced by the same German company that made the poison gas for the death camps in Nazi Germany.
Regardless of the world’s birth control efforts and regardless of its anti-abortion laws and religious beliefs, there are many reasons why elective abortions will continue to remain common.
Even though a sizable minority of (mostly very religious) women oppose abortion choice[i], the overwhelming majority of anti-choice voices in power (in our pulpits, media and political machines) have always been voices that will never have to experience an unwanted pregnancy — powerful male voices — voices from cardinals, bishops, priests, televangelists and ministers — voices from U.S. congressmen and state assemblymen.
Every year in the U.S. over three million unintended pregnancies occur. About 1.3 million end in abortions. But with emergency contraceptive pills (EC) taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex the number of unintended pregnancies might actually be cut in half. Thus, the widespread easy availability of EC could constitute one of the most important advances in birth control in the last 40 years. Yet, there remains strong religious opposition to EC, mostly from the Roman Catholic Church.
Have our pro-choice laws really had a devastating psychological effect on our nation as President Reagan once warned? Hardly! Most Americans and most Western Europeans have healthy families growing up in safe surroundings. In stark contrast, in almost all countries where abortions are still illegal, there are high infant mortality rates and little commitment to either women’s rights, or to the health of children.
Twp Nuclear Scientists, Robert Oppenheimer and Andrei Sakarov, played leading roles in the development of nuclear bombs (A-Bomb for R.O. and the H-Bomb for A. S.) for their respective governments, and then both had similar reversals in their views of the wisdom and morality of the nuclear weapons programs in their respective nations.