American Idol, StayTeen.org and Planned Parenthood: Promoting Sex, Abortion
by Kortney Blythe
March 5, 2010
LifeNews.com Note: Kortney Blythe oversees the Rock for Life chapters and street teams throughout the nation to encourage continued activism and assist them in persevering in the battle to restore personhood to pre-born children.
While watching American Idol, a commercial came on that caught my attention. An amateurish-looking home video showed two giddy, laughing teenage girls jumping on a trampoline, acting goofy. Then a voiceover said:
“I love my life. I’m not gonna mess it up with a pregnancy.”
And a web site flashed on the screen: Stayteen.org.
Being the abortion abolitionist I am, I immediately opened my laptop to check it out. At first, I was pleasantly surprised. The web site, which is funded by a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, strongly advised waiting to have sex.
Among the various messages were myths about sex, lists of compelling reasons why abstinence is best and even a mention of how TV and movies portray sex as having no repercussions. In addition, they impressively differentiated between lust and love, and recognized the physical and emotional consequences attached to sex.
According to their bullet points, not everybody is doing it. Nearly 70 percent of teens wish they had waited to have sex and 94 percent want a strong abstinence message.
But, as I expected, that was the end of the good news. After leaving the “abstinence” section and perusing the rest of the site, I came upon the “help and advice” section. Who took the top spot under the first three resource topics?
Planned Parenthood.
Yes, that bastion of abortion, libertine sex (for the young and old) and the undermining of parents and purity. To appease parents and the general public, Planned Parenthood occasionally uses the word abstinence in their propaganda. But when mentioned, it is nearly always followed with a “but” and some nonsense about realizing how unrealistic it is; thus undermining the whole purpose of promoting it.
It’s disturbingly contradictory for a web site that claims to want to prevent teen pregnancy and promote abstinence to send young people to Planned Parenthood for questions about “sex, protection, contraception…STDs…[and] emergency contraception.”
Once again, our government (and whoever else was involved in this site) fails to grasp the mixed messages they are sending to kids when they view such a web site.
A show like American Idol is watched by families with kids of varying ages. Many of them will visit StayTeen.org because of the captivating commercial. Unfortunately, the site perpetuates the false message that “abstinence is good, but since it’s probably not realistic, use contraception.” Until parents start consistently teaching their children and teens lifelong chastity, the rates of teen pregnancy, STDs and premarital sex at younger and younger ages will continue to rise.
No amount of confusing web sites will change the statistics.
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