<p>[No Soup for You!](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-30-abstinence-message_x.htm”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-30-abstinence-message_x.htm</a>)</p>
<p>Are the manufacturers of birth control pills/foam/condoms/diaphragms/ worried? 
</p>
<p>I doubt they are worried for their US sales. I suspect it isn’t a huge number of 20-29 year olds who are going to stop having sex in response to this new government campaign. </p>
<p>I shared this story with my college suitemates. Really, getting into adults’ sex lives is really crossing the line, in my opinion.</p>
<p>well yes I admit I was being a little sarcastic-
Doesnt this administration have anything else to worry about than what the citizens do in the bedroom?</p>
<p>Abstinence prevents pregnancy in married people too!</p>
<p>Oh, NJres, don’t say that. That will be next. They’ll target married couples who don’t have solid careers or the “parenting skills” they’ve deemed appropriate.</p>
<p>but abstinence also promotes frustration and aggression and I think there are enough bad drivers- plus its icy out there!
but…you can create a lot of heat from friction ;)</p>
<p>Perhaps they think that targetting people in their 20’s with the abstinence idea will be more successful than it’s been with teenagers. We all know how well it’s worked with teens. I agree with you, EK, it’s ridiculous and just one more way that the current government is not only wasting money but is also insinuating itself into peoples’ private lives, where it has NO business.</p>
<p>The federal government’s “no sex without marriage” message isn’t just for kids anymore.
Here are a few graphs of the USA Today story. Gotta post this because it is so alarming that this is what our government is choosing to spend our tax money on.</p>
<p>Some parents may be old enough to remember that when John Kennedy ran for president, some people voted against him because they were concerned that the pope would be running America. That fear was, of course, ridiculous. However, what’s horrifying is that our current president appears to believe that his role is to force people to meet standards of his religion, and he seems to be doing this by any means necessary.</p>
<p>I saw a French documentary a few years ago called, “Le Monde Selon Bush” – “the world according to Bush” that said that the U.S. is fighting in the Mideast to protect Israel because protecting Israel is related to the fundamentalist type of religion that Bush practices. That kind of religion-inspired foreign policy seemed far fetched to me, but given the below, that scenerio seems very possible.</p>
<p>"It now appears that elected officials ouNow the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.</p>
<p>The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it’s a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults. </p>
<p>‘They’ve stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It’s an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health…’</p>
<p>For last year’s state grants, Congress appropriated $50 million. A similar amount is expected for 2007, but the money has not yet been allocated, according to the Administration for Children and Families.'</p>
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<p>Actually, homosexuality and abortion can both get you to 100%, too. But of course, decent Americans don’t talk about that. Hysterectomy is also pretty darn reliable, and frankly, I think they’d have a lot more success with a public campaign for hysterectomy than they will for abstinence.</p>
<p>I notice that since I’ve turned 30, the federal government is not going to try to stop me from sleeping with my boyfriend. I guess that old maids like me are a lost cause anyway?</p>
<p>I wonder if the next “public health” campaign will be to get people to give up driving. After all, like sex with condoms-plus-pill, it isn’t 100% safe! And if we teach people to use seat belts and air bags, that will just make the problem worse, because then people will be more likely to drive.</p>
<p>On the one hand, this story is a lot overblown. The only thing that really happened is that they changed the regulations to make clear that states were entitled to target 20-somethings as part of their abstinence programs if they want to. It’s not a commitment of millions of federal dollars to convince 20-somethings to stop having sex, other than in the most extreme, unlikely hypothetical sense.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the whole federal abstinence advocacy program is nuts to begin with, and this just emphasizes that a little more.</p>
<p>so I wonder where the money set aside for states to implement abstinence programs will go- when states reject the strings attached ( and will state taxes go up to find the money to fund health programs the fed money formerly assisted with?)</p>