Every time some new technology or idea is brought into the market that makes it less risky for people to have sex, there’s a popular retaliation that resurfaces.
The claim? It’ll just encourage people to have sex.
And in some cases, this popular belief is probably true.
Most recently it has been brought up with respect to the human papilloma virus vaccine ““ because a vaccine now exists for HPV, the worry is that people will feel less inhibited about having sex ““ and maybe unprotected sex.
But this claim has also come up before as an argument against anything from abortion to sex education to giving out free condoms.
This idea that safe-sex measures encourage people to have sex has gotten some attention statistically ““ enough to repudiate it on one issue: that abstinence-only education actually increases the rate of teen pregnancy ““ but in other instances, such as abortion, it has received almost no scientific attention at all.
Often the argument is written off as myth, and other times people think it trivializes issues surrounding sex. Rarely is it taken seriously.
And while I have yet to see a case where this argument provides enough reason to do away with the new idea or technology, it deserves to be taken seriously ““ especially when it comes to properly educating people about the availability and use of abortion and birth control.
The idea that abortions shouldn’t be legal is partially based off the idea that women will more readily engage in sex because if they get pregnant they can “just” get an abortion.
It’s the word “just” that gets me. My inclination is to do what’s been done before ““ to just say that whoever thinks this is just trivializing abortion. But who really knows what’s involved?
Anyone who has had an abortion or has heard in any detail what it’s like to go through one knows that one doesn’t “just” get an abortion. It’s an involved process that costs money, takes time and most of all, is physically and emotionally invasive.
As I detailed in a column I wrote last year, one form of abortion involves literally sucking the fetus out of the womb, which is not exactly a pleasant experience.
So if abortion does in fact increase the amount of unprotected sex that people are having, that’s more of an issue with sex education and the fact that there is a culture of silence around abortion, than with abortion itself.
The same goes for programs that hand out free condoms or other forms of birth control. People do strange things with information, and we need to be careful about how we present this information.
I used to mentor middle school girls. We would talk with them about everything from sex to racism to teen pregnancy. But when it came around to talking about body image, we were told not to specifically talk about anorexia and bulimia.
Why? Because it would only give the girls ideas on how to fit in, according to the program, and might result in more of them developing an eating disorder.
This could also happen as a result of sex education and condom distribution ““ by, for example, providing free condoms for kids, they may just get the impression that everyone is actually having sex, and that they’re expected to participate.
But if fear of STIs is the only thing stopping young people from having sex, then more importantly, they probably don’t realize the emotional effects of sexual relationships.
Educating people on these ideas isn’t easy, but it’s definitely a better option than leaving people in the dark or without the means to protect themselves.
Even with respect to the HPV vaccine, where the benefits outweigh the risks, the idea that more people may be encouraged to engage in risky behavior because they’re no longer at risk for HPV should never be simply written off as popular myth without being scrutinized.
People already have so many fears and reservations about sex. By providing vaccines and education we can minimize these reservations.
But because there are so many misconceptions surrounding sex, we also need to look into how people may misinterpret these messages and how they may act on those misinterpretations.
E-mail Loewenstein at lloewenstein@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.