Dakota Voice Poll Closed

Last week's Dakota Voice poll is now closed. The poll was actually a survey question to measure awareness of a public policy issue.

The question was:

What percentage of abortions in SD in 2007 were because "The mother did not desire to have the child"?

I gave a hint last week when the poll opened, stating the answer could be found at the website for the South Dakota Department of Health.

Some respondents may not have seen this hint, or simply didn't take the time to look up the stats, or (based on the perception fed to them by the "mainstream" media) thought the number was much lower than it actually is.

Still, the majority of respondents answered correctly:

1.7% (11%)

33.5% (6%)

83.2% (75%)

5.2% (6%)

The answer was an astonishing 83.2% of abortions in South Dakota in 2007 were performed because "the mother did not desire to have the child. In other words, essentially retroactive birth control.

Incidentally, I didn't pull those other answer choices out of thin air; I took them from the same DOH report. The percentage of abortions done for rape/incest was 1.7% (even though these children are just as human as the child conceived in love). The percentage of abortions performed because "The mother could not afford the child" was the second largest at 33.5% (even though poor women have been having children for thousands of years, and still do, and many agencies such as crisis pregnancy centers and adoption agencies exist to help women of limited financial means). Finally, 5.2% of the abortions were done because of the stated reason "The mother’s emotional health was at risk" (however, there is no specific requirement for documenting a compelling hazard exists, so we don't know how many of these were even remotely genuine...and what's more, would killing your 2-month old be permissible if "The mother’s emotional health was at risk"?)

Thanks to all who participated in the survey. When someone insists abortions are "necessary," I encourage you to remember these percentages.

Next week's survey question has just been posted:

According to the CDC, what is the largest source of AIDS transmission?

- Homosexual contact & injected drug use
- Injected drug use
- High-risk heterosexual contact
- Homosexual contact
- Other

Hint: you can find this information at the website of the Centers for Disease Control.

Homosexual AIDS in Beijing 10x that of Prostitutes

From the Chinese Xinhua, the risk of AIDS is, as in the United States, vastly higher in the homosexual community:

The transmission of HIV/AIDS among gays in the Chinese capital was even worse than through sex workers, the city's disease control center said on Friday.

Up to 5 percent of homosexuals in the city were infected, compared with 0.5 percent of women sex workers, said He Xiong, the Beijing Centers of Diseases Control and Prevention deputy director.

Statistics like this should scream at us that homosexual behavior is very unhealthy; in fact, it would be more healthy to smoke than to engage in homosexual behavior since studies have shown homosexuals have a reduced lifespan of 25-40%.

When 10 times as many homosexuals have AIDS than women who work in the sex trade, that should say something loud and clear to anyone reasonable enough to hear.

Here in the United States, the CDC says 72% of male AIDS cases spring from male homosexual behavior...while according to a study commissioned by the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign only about 2.9% of the population is homosexual.

When 72% of AIDS cases come from 2.9% of the population...what is wrong with this picture?

If 72% of brain cancer cases came from 2.9% of the population that used a certain type of cell phone...don't you think that cell phone brand would be yanked off the market in a New York minute?

If 72% of mouth cancer cases came from 2.9% of the population who brushed their teach each morning before breakfast...don't you think there'd be a massive PR campaign to warn people not to brush their teeth before eating breakfast?

Yet instead of trying to convince people to "just say no" to homosexual behavior, we approve of it, we applaud it, we celebrate it, we even go so far as to legally and governmentally protect people's access to practice it as openly as possible.

Many of our schools allow student clubs oriented around this dangerous behavior. Many schools even teach children that this behavior is normal, natural and healthy.

We would rather smile and pretend to be the good guy than save people from suffering and death.

We are a people who have lost touch with not only morality, but all common sense and reality.

Brazilian Schools to Get Condom Machines

Reprinted by permission of The Christian Post

By Aaron Leichman
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Jul. 10 2008 07:31 PM EDT

Pro-family advocates and critics around the world expressed strong opposition this week after news spread that the nation of Brazil would begin a large scale effort to combat the spread of AIDS and STDs through the installation of condom vending machines in hundreds of its schools.

According to Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao, AIDS is a major problem among Brazilian youth with an alarming 70,000 cases of AIDS reported among Brazilians under 24.

Eduardo Barbosa, head of the National Program for Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS, had explained the new development as one that would be crucial in combating AIDS and STDs.

"The expectation is that all of the public schools will have at least one machine. At the end of the year, we will evaluate the usage and the appropriateness of the machines in the school environment, and how we give information and guidance regarding them," Barbosa told the Jornal do Brasil.

Critics, however, have been skeptical about the notion of putting condoms in schools.

Cristovam Buarque, a former Minister of Education, has made his opposition to the measure known since the debate over it first began last year. Buarque has been among those who argue that only through adequate sex education policies in schools – not the careless distribution of condoms – can the incidences of AIDS and STDs decrease.

“The solution is not the mechanical ease of machines that distribute condoms,” he told Brazzil.com.

“Today, many children are enrolled in school but do not attend. They go merely for the snacks served. Now, they will go to receive condoms,” he added.

Pro-family advocates, meanwhile, argue that abstinence and faith-based programs are the only tried and true ways to stem the tide of AIDS.

Most notably, studies in the United States have consistently revealed that abstinence-based education programs have been effective in schools.

In a review by The Heritage Foundation, 15 out of 21 abstinence-education programs “showed positive behavioral results in the students, including the delay or reduction of sexual activity.”

"The big problem with this government program for distributing condom machines to the schools is that, rather than teaching fidelity and respect in relationships with others, it runs the risk of creating an incentive to engage in sexual intercourse, including premature sexual intercourse," explained Dom Dimas Lara Barbosa, the secretary-general of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB), according to LifeSiteNews.com

"Our mission as Catholics must be to reaffirm the beauty of human sexuality, but above all, the respect that one should have in every action, including the conjugal act. Safe sex, only in marriage, blessed by God,” he concluded.

The new measure will begin taking effect in October.

Copyright 2008 The Christian Post. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Women's Conference Seeks to Strengthen 'Backbone of Society'

Reprinted by permission of The Christian Post

By Eric Young
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jul. 08 2008 05:24 PM EDT

A three-day gathering will be held this weekend to mobilize women to tackle the issues of HIV/AIDS, debt, global poverty, parenting and spiritual empowerment.

After kicking off with a concert featuring award-winning Gospel artist Martha Munizzi, the Manifest Destiny 2008 Conference also aims to encourage good mental, spiritual, physical and financial health of women through workshops and through networking.

"Women of color have been disproportionately affected by everything from AIDS to abuse, cancer to coronary disease,” explained Dr. Barbara Austin Lucas, executive director of the conference’s presenter - Women Organizing, Mobilizing and Building (WOMB).

“It is high time that we mobilize,” she added in a news release.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, women have been affected by HIV/AIDs since the beginning of the epidemic, but the impact on women has grown over time.

“Women of color, particularly Black women, have been especially hard hit and represent the majority of new HIV and AIDS cases among women, and the majority of women living with the disease,” it states in its HIV/AIDS policy fact sheet, updated this past May.

Furthermore, as the International Women’s Health Coalition has noted, one in three women around the world will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.

In her comments, WOMB’s Lucas highlighted the need to educate and protect women.

“Women have historically been the backbone of society,” she stated. “If the core is compromised how can the community stand?"

The Manifest Destiny Conference, sponsored by Sisterhood Agenda, will be held the weekend of July 11-13 at the Brooklyn Marriott in New York.

It ends on Sunday with a service and the Destiny Awards Brunch honoring dedicated women of faith from across the region and the country.

On the Web: More information at www.wombinc.org


Copyright 2008 The Christian Post. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AIDS On the Increase in Homosexual Community

AIDS is on the increase in the homosexual community, but are you likely to hear about it from most of the "mainstream" media?

From Reuters yesterday:

Between 2001 and 2006, male-to-male sex was the largest HIV transmission category in the US, and the only one associated with an increasing number of HIV/AIDS diagnoses, according to a report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The increase was highest among boys and men between the ages of 13 and 24 years who had sex with other males, particularly among ethnic minorities.

SOURCE: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, June 27, 2008.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 72% of male AIDS cases spring from homosexual activity.

The risk of homosexual activity in the contraction of AIDS has become so difficult to ignore that even Matt Foreman, the former Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, admitted a few months ago that AIDS is primarily a "gay disease":

"Internally, when these numbers come out, the 'established' gay community seems to have a collective shrug as if this isn't our problem. Folks, with 70 percent of the people in this country living with HIV being gay or bi, we cannot deny that HIV is a gay disease. We have to own that and face up to that."

There are certainly other valid reasons for not engaging in homosexual behavior, Biblical prohibitions and other health risks among them, but if there was any intellectual honesty in the greater homosexual community, that community would be radically shrinking out of self-interest, if nothing else.

There has to be a spiritual component at work, a "strong delusion" that prevents some from seeing the truth, even from a secular perspective.

Which is why it's all the more irresponsible when well-meaning (or uncaring?) politically correct individuals deliberately avoid the truth, glossing over it in an attempt to look like a nice guy. They're like the doctor who examines the smoking patient, finds cancer, then tells the patient, "You're in perfect health! Keep doing what you're doing!"

We're not doing homosexuals a favor by telling them there's nothing immoral or unhealthy about their behavior. In doing that, we're negligently contributing to their physical, emotional and spiritual disaster.

There's a reason the Bible says, "Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses."

Congressional Report Optimistic About Efforts to Stem Spread of AIDS

A congressional report on PEPFAR (The United States President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) just released on February 1st has encouraging news regarding efforts to control the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in Africa and other underdeveloped countries. The report begins by saying that the “pandemic” of AIDS cannot be defeated by treatment measures alone. Only efforts to prevent infection hold promise of eventually breaking the cycle of AIDS transmission. More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981. AIDS orphans number in the tens of millions world wide, in 2007 50% of all adults with AIDS are women, and young people (under 25) account for more than half of all new cases.[1]

In sub-Saharan Africa prevention efforts have concentrated on the “ABC” approach to behavior change (Abstain, Be faithful, correct and consistent use of Condoms where appropriate), with particular emphasis on A and B. In a footnote it is stated that “AB programs promote as their primary behavioral objectives that 1) unmarried individuals abstain from sexual activity as the best and only way to protect themselves from exposure to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and 2) individuals practice fidelity in marriage and other relationships as a critical way to reduce risks of exposure to HIV.” Compelling evidence is provided that prevention efforts are working in at least fifteen countries including Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Guyana, Nigeria and Mozambique.

The report explains further:

“ABC programs are more complex than the simple acronym suggests, because changing human behavior is a uniquely difficult undertaking. Achieving ABC requires significant cultural changes. Reaching children at an early age is key if they are to delay sexual debut and limit their number of partners… [I]nfluencing a 10 year old’s future behavior is far easier than changing a 25 year old’s settled behavior. Behavioral impact from programs for children may not immediately be apparent, because programs must work to influence future behavior rather than immediate behavior. Yet we must be patient and persistent — we are only four years into PEPFAR’s partnerships for a generational approach to prevention.
ABC also includes changing gender norms. Partnering with children’s parents and caregivers, supporting their efforts to teach children to respect themselves and each other, is the best way to promote gender equality. In order for the ABC approach to be effective it must address the gender dynamics that affect sexual decision-making and strive to reduce sexual coercion, violence and rape. Through support for delayed sexual debut, secondary abstinence, fidelity to a single partner, partner reduction and correct and consistent condom use, ABC contributes to changing unhealthy cultural gender norms.”

This report to Congress gives all Americans hope that our efforts and our money are being used to the benefit of millions of people and, ultimately, untold millions of lives will be saved from the devastating disease of HIV and other STDs. Yet, back home, there are epidemiologists, teachers’ unions like the NEA and organizations like Planned Parenthood that insist abstinence education cannot work here. The reports vary widely depending on the source, from “marginally successful,” to “little benefit, to “not effective” to “harmful.”

Why would a program in one part of the world be so promising and in another “not effective” or even “harmful?” True, we are dealing with different cultures, traditions and beliefs, but in Africa these indigenous characteristics may have very deep roots in their society and hundreds of years of social acceptance, yet abstinence and fidelity programs seem to be working. Our culture of promiscuity and hedonism is barely sixty years old yet there are those who insist that change in our society is impossible. And they may be right as long as we accept sex among pre-teens as normal and healthy and homosexual behavior as equivalent to monogamous sex between to a husband and wife, and adultery as an acceptable diversion from boredom. As long as we ignore and even promote behavior that only a generation ago was considered perverted, and we now know to be very dangerous, we can expect little to change in regards to AIDS prevention. Condoms alone, even if they are used consistently, cannot stem the epidemic of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Perhaps it is time we too swallow the antedote that we’ve given other countries and begin the healing of our own suffering society.