Articles

TALKPOINT
On this page, IMPACT writers give their comments and viewpoints on a diverse range of contemporary issues which affect the church, our culture and society. IMPACT welcomes the responses and comments of readers to the issues raised here.

Please send them to us at:
301 Geylang Rd #03-04 Geylang Centre Singapore 389344

Talk Point
Recently, there has been some incidents in Singapore of stillborn babies or dead fetuses being discarded by their young unmarried mothers. They were dumped down the rubbish chute, or notably in one particular case, straight over the ledge of a high-rise apartment and nearly hitting an elderly man sitting in the courtyard below. These pregnancies were consequences of premarital sex.
The president of the Family Enrichment Society Margaret Chew wrote in a recent letter to The Straits Times strongly advocating abstinence from premarital sex. She found it disturbing that the young writers on YouthInk, a weekly youth section in the newspaper glossed over the whether premarital sex was right or wrong and focused on it being a matter of personal choice. Her society, “an association of concerned parents who aimed to make society more cohesive by promoting family values,” while not denying the freedom of young people to decide for themselves, challenged the assumption that premarital sex is okay. She pointed out research in the US that teaches abstinence is the only 100-per-cent effective way to prevent out-of wedlock pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. More than that, she wrote, abstinence is “a pathway leading to respect for oneself and others, to healthier relationships and eventually, to love and happiness in marriage.”
The coordinator of the weekly mindyourbody magazine that comes with the same newspaper, Judith Tan, missed the point, saying that Chew didn’t mention “how many American youngsters who participated in abstinence-only programmes at some US schools were taught that abortion could lead to sterility and suicide, and touching a person’s genitals could “result in pregnancy.” It is not even known whether these come from the same research. Even if some things these American youngsters had been taught were wrong, it still does not affect the validity of abstinence.
To be fair, Judith Tan did not rule out abstinence but “thought that it should be taught side by side with safe sex.” Her rationale was that knowing about both would “help youth make informed choices when it came to having sex or abstaining from sex.” This sounds fine and good until it is put in practice: What then do we teach our teens? “Don’t have sex outside marriage but if you can’t control yourself, please use a condom” or “ You can choose between abstaining from sex or having safe sex.” Tan didn’t mention that ‘safe’ sex is not 100 percent safe. But more importantly, it is hardly “an accurate map and a compass to guide you as there may be a tendency to take a shortcut and get lost along the way.” But a person has already lost his way when he engages in sex outside the context of a loving marriage.
This is because God created sex for marriage between a man and a woman. Outside this context, safe sex is just an attempt to minimize the dire consequences of the moral lapse. By recognising the dire consequences of sex outside marriage, we should therefore teach abstinence from sex outside marriage. That would, in principle, rule out the possibility of any other kind of sex intercourse, whether contraceptives or birth control are used or not.

http://www.impact.com.sg/Talk_Point.asp