Besides the immediate and long term consequences, the direct medical cost of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States is about $17 billion annually.1
Reference:
Chesson HW, Gift TL, Owusu-Edusei K, Tao G, Johnson AP, Kent CK. A brief review of the estimated economic burden of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States: Inflation-adjusted updates of previously published cost studies. Sex Transm Dis 2011; 38(10): 889-891.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Associated factors in sexual risk taking; parental involvement important.
| Associated factors in sexual risk taking; parental involvement important. |
Initiation of sexual risk taking and activity in adolescents can be preceded by certain associated factors. Some factors have been identified to be predictive of adolescent transition from being sexually abstinent to engaging in risky sexual activity like oral sex and sexual intercourse.1 A number of youth engage in oral sex as a gateway to sexual intercourse. Oral sex is sex. Moreover, like all other forms of risky sexual activity, it is strongly associated with transmitting and contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Recent studies have shown the increasing incidence of oral cancers are associated with oral sexual activity and acquisition of HPV infection.2 A recent study was conducted to evaluate the best predictors for sexual transition among adolescents. The study examined factors associated with transitions from abstinence to oral sex experience and oral sex to intercourse, as well as factors associated with abstinence to sexual intercourse. In addition, it examines whether or not there are transition links between male and females due to societal pressures.1 The study participants were adolescents aged 13 to 16 from eight regional high schools. A sample of 343 students completed a baseline assessment and 300 students completed both parts of the survey. The survey collected information on the students’ age, family structure, and different measures for self-esteem,parental involvement, drug usage, academic success and association with deviant peers. This survey response was from predominantly white females with a mean age of 14.8 years as well as a mean household of about 4.3 members. At the baseline survey, 235 of the participants reported no sexual experience but at the second survey point 34 participants had engaged in sexual behavior since the baseline. The researchers found that boys who engage in intimate sexual behavior by the second survey period reported much lower self-esteem and lower religiosity compared to those who did not. Higher alcohol usage and high self-esteem were strong predictors for a girl’s transition to higher sexual activity by the second survey. The link between self-esteem and sexual transitions may warrant future research, especially in boys. From the study on the transitions it is apparent that there is a dichotomy between psychosocial profiles of boys and girls. However, lower religiosity was found to be linked with greater sexual experience in both boys and girls.
References:
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Monday, August 22, 2011
Judge: North Carolina Must Fund Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz
by Steven Ertelt | Charlotte, NC | LifeNews.com | 8/22/11 11:00 AM
A federal judge has ruled that North Carolina must fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business while it moves forward with the lawsuit it filed against the state over a decision by state lawmakers to revoke its taxpayer funding in the state budget.In North Carolina, the state legislature approved a measure to remove federal funds from the pro-abortion organization in its state budget. The abortion business receives $434,000 through state family planning programs aimed at reducing teen pregnancies and providing birth control. Although the money can only be used for non-abortion services, the same organization is also the nation’s largest abortion business — doing more than 330,000 annually and comprising more than one-quarter of all abortions in the United States annually.
U.S. District Court Judge James Beaty heard arguments from both sides in Winston Salem earlier this month and, on Friday, he ordered North Carolina to honor its contract with Planned Parenthood pending the outcome of the lawsuit. Beaty issued a preliminary injunction siding with the abortion giant in its demand to receive $212,000 of the funds.
Beaty said health department Secretary Lanier Cansler must renew the funding, writing, “The court expects defendant Cansler to follow all applicable state and federal laws and regulations” and warning that “further proceedings would be appropriate” is the state doesn’t comply. The state had a contract in place for 2011-2012 that he ruled it must honor.
Beaty also said in his ruling that the decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood wrongly contravened federal law authorizing funding for the abortion business via the federal family planning program and he said the budget provision wrongly singled out a specific organization for de-funding.
Colm issued a statement saying the abortion business is “deeply grateful that the court has stopped the state from enforcing the ban prohibiting Planned Parenthood from” getting taxpayer funding.
The abortion giant has already sued the states of Kansas and Indiana for adopting new legislation to revoke the taxpayer financing from the group that has been shown to be the biggest abortion business in the country, to cover up cases of sexual abuse, and to assist sex traffickers in getting abortions for the girls on whom they prey.
Barbara Holt, the president of North Carolina Right to Life, supported the move to revoke taxpayer financing.
“Planned Parenthood is the single largest abortion provider in the nation and our tax dollars should not go to organizations who are in the business of killing unborn children,” stated Holt. “97.6% of the services Planned Parenthood reports as involving pregnant women are abortion services.”
Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed the state budget in part because of the Planned Parenthood de-funding but the state legislature overrode the veto.
After the state House voted to override the veto, House Speaker Thom Tillis said “We think we’ve done something historic on several different levels” according to the Greensboro News-Record. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, also a Republican, told the newspaper the state Senate would follow suit today and it did just that.
Republicans hold 31 seats in the 50-seat state Senate and that proved to be more than enough for the override.
Following the vote, the Planned Parenthood abortion business criticized state legislators because the budget provision “would effectively end state and federal funding for Planned Parenthood.”
An April poll conducted by the Polling Company and WomanTrend reveals a majority of Americans, 54 percent, oppose giving tax dollars for family planning services to organizations that perform abortions. The poll also shows the intensity of this position, with 43 percent “strongly” opposing any federal funds going to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood, while just 20 percent “strongly” support federal funds going to abortion businesses.
Kellyanne Conway, the president of the Polling Company firm said the support for de-funding Planned Parenthood crosses lines on the abortion debate.
“Even 26 percent of pro-choice adherents rejected diverting taxpayer dollars for family planning organizations that provide abortions,” Conway said. “Some Americans may have positive attitudes toward Planned Parenthood, but may also reject the underlying premise that federal funding for family planning organizations should be fungible for abortions.”
Breaking down the results further, the poll found 82 percent of those who say they are pro-life responded yes when asked, “Do you support or oppose tax dollars for family planning services going to organizations that perform abortions?” Another 26 percent of people who say they are “pro-choice” on abortion agreed. Some 12 percent of pro-life people support funding Planned Parenthood while 70 percent of those “pro-choice” do.
The poll also found women opposed funding Planned Parenthood on a 51-40 percent margin, Hispanics opposed funding 47-45 percent, blacks opposed funding 62-26 percent, independents opposed funding 52-36, while 18-34 year-old respondents opposed Planned Parenthood funding on a 54-38 percent margin. People living in the South opposed funding the most.
In other states, Indiana approved a law de-funding Planned Parenthood, and New Hampshire Planned Parenthood centers may close after the state revoked a $1.8 million grant. Montana Planned Parenthood is also grappling with funding cuts and one county in Tennessee de-funded Planned Parenthood. Kansas is fighting to keep its de-funding decision in place.
Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin is making cuts after the abortion business lost $1 million in taxpayer funding there. Ohio lawmakers also filed a new bill to shift funding from Planned Parenthood to health departments. Planned Parenthood could lose as much as $64 million in Texas.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Cohabitation Linked to Unstable Families
Special Report - August 17, 2011
Children today are more likely to spend time in a cohabiting household and to suffer a myriad of negative lifetime effects as a result, than they are to experience the divorce of their parents, according to a new report released Wednesday by a team of family scholars from some of the nation’s leading educational institutions. The report, “Why Marriage Matters: 30 Conclusions from the Social Sciences (Third Edition),” is the long-awaited comprehensive summary of the latest research pointing to the importance of marriage to child wellbeing. Co-sponsored by the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values and by the National Marriage Project (NMP) at the University of Virginia, the report is written by a team of 18 scholars chaired by W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the NMP.
The report’s major finding is that cohabitation, which it notes has increased 14-fold since 1970, has replaced divorce as the main contributor to the rising rates of family instability in the United States. In fact, by the age of 12, more children today will spend time in a cohabiting family than will experience the divorce of their parents (see figure 2 from report). While a decrease in parental divorce is certainly a good thing, the increasing rates of cohabitation, particularly for children, is not, because, as the report points out, “cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage.”
“In a striking turn of events, the divorce rate for married couples with children has returned almost to the levels we saw before the divorce revolution kicked in during the 1970s. Nevertheless, family instability is on the rise for American children as a whole,” explains Professor Wilcox in a press release. “This seems in part to be because more couples are having children in cohabiting unions, which are very unstable. This report also indicates that children in cohabiting households are more likely to suffer from a range of emotional and social problems—drug use, depression, and dropping out of high school—compared to children in intact, married families.”
Among the key findings in report regarding cohabitation:
- About 24 percent of all children are born to cohabiting parents, which the report notes is more than the percentage of children born to single mothers.
- An additional 20 percent of children will spend some time in a cohabiting household with an unrelated adult (often because of the divorce of their parents), meaning that “more than four in 10 children are exposed to a cohabiting relationship.”
- Cohabiting parents with children are more likely to break up before the child turns 12 than married parents with children (see figure 5 from the report).
The report describes the “rise in cohabiting households” as “the largely unrecognized threat to the quality and stability of children’s lives in today’s families.” It details the latest research on cohabitation, which shows that compared to children raised in intact, married families, children in cohabiting families “do significantly worse” on several social, educational and psychological outcomes; and that children in cohabiting households are also significantly more likely to suffer from physical, emotional and sexual abuse than children in either intact married families or single parent families (see figure 3 from report);
Finally, the report includes the following three conclusions that echo the previous findings from the 2002 and 2005 editions of “Why Marriage Matters”:
- “The intact biological, married family remains the gold standard for family life in the United States.
- Marriage is an important public good, associated with a range of economic, health, educational, and safety benefits that help local, state, and federal governments serve the common good.
- The benefits of marriage extend to poor, working-class, and minority communities, despite the fact that marriage has weakened in these communities in the last four decades.”
“This important report shows why the North Carolina statutes against cohabitation are needed,” said Alysse ElHage, associate director of research for the North Carolina Family Policy Council. “The State is correct in recognizing and supporting marriage as the only domestic union that should be recognized. An intact family unit with a married mother and a father is the best place to raise children, and we are pleased that North Carolina law supports this reality.”
Related resources:
Census Report Examines Cohabitation - November 9, 2010
Marriage Beats Cohabitation - March 5, 2010
Most Children Live With Parents - July 27, 2010
Characteristics of Cohabiting Adults Studied - July 16, 2009
Report Analyzes Cohabitation Effects - June 23, 2008
How Cohabitation Undermines Marriage and the Family - Findings - June 2005
Copyright © 2011. North Carolina Family Policy Council. All rights reserved.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Abortion Has Caused 300K Breast Cancer Deaths Since Roe
by Steven Ertelt | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 1/17/11 4:44 PM
A leading breast cancer researcher says abortion has caused at least 300,000 cases of breast cancer causing a woman’s death since the Supreme Court allowed virtually unlimited abortion in its 1973 case.
Professor Joel Brind, an endocrinologist at Baruch College in New York, worked with several scientists on a 1996 paper published in the Journal of Epidemiol Community Health showing a “30% greater chance of developing breast cancer” for women who have induced abortions. He recently commented on how many women have become victims.
“If we take the overall risk of breast cancer among women to be about 10% (not counting abortion), and raise it by 30%, we get 13% lifetime risk,” Brind explains. Using the 50 million abortions since Roe v. Wade figure, we get 1.5 million excess cases of breast cancer. At an average mortality of 20% since 1973, that would mean that legal abortion has resulted in some 300,000 additional deaths due to breast cancer since Roe v. Wade.”
Brind said his estimate excludes deaths from the use of abortion to delay first full term pregnancies – a recognized breast cancer risk.
Karen Malec, the head of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, a public awareness group, says the number of studies showing the abortion-breast cancer link continues to grow in the years since Brind’s groundbreaking 1996 analysis of the major studies at that time.
“During the last 21 months, four epidemiological studies and one review reported an abortion-breast cancer link,” she noted. “One study included National Cancer Institute branch chief Louise Brinton as co-author. We count nearly 50 published epidemiological studies since 1957 reporting a link. Biological and experimental studies also support it.”
“Experts proved in medical journals that nearly all of the roughly 20 studies denying the link are seriously flawed (fraudulent). Like the tobacco-cancer cover-up, these are used to snow women into believing abortion is safe,” Malec added.
Surgeons like Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey who has extensively explained how abortion increases the breast cancer risk, have seen first-hand how abortion hurts women.
In 2002, Angela Lanfranchi, MD testified under oath in a California lawsuit against Planned Parenthood that she had private conversations with leading experts who agreed abortion raises breast cancer risk, but they refused to discuss it publicly, saying it was “too political.”
As the co-director of the Sanofi-aventis Breast Care Program at the Steeplechase Cancer Center, Lanfranchi has treated countless women facing a breast cancer diagnosis. Lanfranchi was named a 2010 Castle Connolly NY Metro Area “Top Doc” in breast surgery.
In an article she wrote for the medical journal Linacre Quarterly, Lanfranchi talks about why abortion presents women problems and increases their breast cancer risk:
Induced abortion boosts breast cancer risk because it stops the normal physiological changes in the breast that occur during a full term pregnancy and that lower a mother’s breast cancer risk. A woman who has a full term pregnancy at 20 has a 90% lower risk of breast cancer than a woman who waits until age 30.
Breast tissue after puberty and before a term pregnancy is immature and cancer-vulnerable. Seventy five percent of this tissue is Type 1 lobules where ductal cancers start and 25 percent is Type 2 lobules where lobular cancers start. Ductal cancers account for 85% of all breast cancers while lobular cancers account for 12-15% of breast cancers.
As soon as a woman conceives, the embryo secretes human chorionic gonadotrophin or hCG, the hormone we check for in pregnancy tests.
HCG causes the mother’s ovaries to increase the levels of estrogen and progesterone in her body resulting in a doubling of the amount of breast tissue she has; in effect, she then has more Type 1 and 2 lobules where cancers start.
After mid pregnancy at 20 weeks, the fetus/placenta makes hPL, another hormone that starts maturing her breast tissue so that it can make milk. It is only after 32 weeks that she has made enough of the mature Type 4 lobules that are cancer resistant so that she lowers her risk of breast cancer.
Induced abortion before 32 weeks leaves the mother’s breast with more vulnerable tissue for cancer to start. It is also why any premature birth before 32 weeks, not just induced abortion, increases or doubles breast cancer risk.
By the end of her pregnancy, 85% of her breast tissue is cancer resistant. Each pregnancy thereafter decreases her risk a further 10%.
A woman can use this information to make an informed decision about her pregnancy. If she chooses to abort her pregnancy for whatever reason, she should start breast screening about 8-10 years later so that if she does develop a cancer, it can be found early and treated early for a better outcomes.
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