Chastity, the best choice for minors

The Editor: I was most disturbed to see a full page advertisement in an edition of your newspaper advocating sexual and reproductive health rights for children and adolescents. 

Some facts are presented that are angled to make us believe that more than two thirds of children are sexually active before the age of 13 years, and many other facts designed to panic the public into calling for the FPA to provide contraceptives and reproductive health (politic speak for abortion) services to our children. Any young person under the age of 18 is a legal minor and must be guided by parents or guardians.  What our adolescents need is not sex education, which, of and by itself is sex instruction, and only encourages them to experiment, but chastity education. The only education programmes that should be supported and encouraged are those built on absolute truth. There are absolute standards of right and wrong, and no one has the right to choose immorality. 

The only educational programmes that should be introduced into our schools are those that teach sexual morality, in the context of leading children toward the practice of virtue and avoid examining the subject of sex in any concrete, detailed or descriptive way in the classroom or other public setting.  Any such programme introduced into our schools must recognise, respect and support the primary role of parents in the moral formation of their children and their prerogative to impart any information beyond the abstract on the subject of sex privately, delicately and at the appropriate stage of development for the individual child. The FPA state that they need to provide sexual and reproductive health services for adolescents that recognise their rights to information, education and services, privacy, confidentiality, respect but informed consent adolescents are not autonomous moral decision makers. Children cannot make their own decisions about morality after discussion of what are claimed to be relevant considerations, even if both positive and negative consequences of the various alternatives are presented. 

The typical child, including the adolescent, does not have a mature, adult intelligence and is not capable of independently making proper decisions with respect to serious moral matters.  Among other things, in the mind of a young person, bad consequences happen only to other people. Much more important, morality cannot be decided by discussion or personal choice, regardless of how the discussion is conducted or the choice directed. Doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong are not mere positive choices or better decisions, but absolute moral obligations. Furthermore the FPA desires to provide these services in conformity with the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).  This is a United Nations Convention that should be trashed immediately.  Everywhere CEDAW representatives have gone they have pressured governments to legalise abortion, to legalise prostitution, and have cast aspersions on women who chose to stay home to look after their children. Under no circumstances should any government align themselves or cooperate with such a disastrous convention.

Joan Moore
Carenage