On Planned Parenthood's Facebook page for teens, they posted an article answering the question: "Is promiscuity a bad thing?"
According to Planned Parenthood, "there’s nothing bad or unhealthy about having a big number of sexual partners."
Grammar critique aside, there actually are several health risks to having a large number of sexual partners. Some of the major risk factors for HPV and cervical cancer is multiple sexual partners and having sex at an early age. Even the Guttmacher Institute, the former research arm of Planned Parenthood, considered "a person to be at direct risk for STDs if he or she had had two or more partners during the 12 months preceding the interview" during one of their research studies.
Additionally, a person with low self esteem has been shown to engage in sexual relations earlier, and engage in riskier, unprotected sex with multiple partners. That does not sound like "nothing bad or unhealthy" to me.
The article continues, saying that as long as a girl feels "satisfied and confident" with her sexual decisions, she is okay.
Some things that can be unhealthy include having sex before you’re ready, having sex to try to seem impressive or cool, having sex when you don’t want to, having sex with people you don’t like/trust/care about, and having sex without using protection – like condoms and birth control.
If none of those behaviors sound like you, and if you feel satisfied with and confident about your sexual decisions, you have nothing to worry about – even if someone calls you or your behavior “promiscuous.” And that’s also a good reason to hold off on judging or gossiping about other people’s sexual history, too.
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Where to begin. While all of the behaviors in the first paragraph certainly are not desirable, Planned Parenthood is initiating a dangerous sense of moral relativism to its teenage audience. Simply because a person may feel as though their behavior is okay or acceptable does not mean that their decisions are actually healthy or good for them in the long run. The part of the brain that controls decision making is not yet fully developed in teenagers.
It is understandable as to why Planned Parenthood would promote promiscuity as acceptable behavior to teens. A little more than one in four of their clients are teens, and 45% of abortions are repeat abortions.
No wonder they are distributing birth control in schools.
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