Back to abstinence

ONCE upon a time, girls and young women were taught to preserve their chastity as a gift to their husbands. It was a more sedate and morally correct age when pre-marital abstinence was accepted as an integral part of the social mores of the time. Then came the loosening and uprooting effect of the Second World War which eventually led to what is now referred to as “the sexual revolution.” The premium that was once placed on female chastity virtually disappeared with the struggle of women for equality and emancipation, a movement that was fuelled by the romantic images of Hollywood, television and the mass media. Now history has taken us from one extreme to the other with sexual promiscuity becoming the accepted norm and an amoral philosophy that suggests it is allright to do it once it feels good now taking precedence.

Inevitably, it seems, we and the rest of the world have begun to pay a terrible price for this degeneration. The tragedy is starkly seen in the dreadful toll in suffering and death of the HIV/AIDS pandemic which is largely the result of indiscriminate sexual activity. According to official statistics presented as part of World Aids Day, 39.4 million persons are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, almost half of whom are women. In the Caribbean, the level of promiscuous sexual activity may be seen in the fact that the region has the second highest incidence of HIV infection in the world, after sub-Saharan Africa. As far as Trinidad and Tobago is concerned, there has been a marked reduction in the number of AIDS deaths thanks to the free administration of retro-viral drugs, but the number of infected persons, estimated at 20,000, is still frighteningly high.

In this respect, we would like to draw the attention of girls and young women to two facts: first, about half of new infections are occurring in females and, secondly, among the 15-24 age group, 74 percent of those contracting the deadly virus are females. We expect that there is no need for us to spell out the implications of these statistics and that the young women of our country are fully aware of what they mean. With the large number of HIV-positive persons floating around TT and the relatively high incidence of infection among young females, it is imperative for them to make a choice and, in our view, that can only be to invest their chastity with the value it once had and to accept sexual abstinence before marriage as the only safe, proper, intelligent, morally satisfying and self-esteeming course of action. Beyond the fact that abstinence is the only totally effective safeguard against contracting this incurable disease, it is also the means by which our young women can preserve their personal pride and dignity and maintain the respect of others.

This is why this newspaper strongly supports the effort of the Health and Education Ministries to actively promote the virtue of sexual abstinence among our young people, particularly our girls and young women. The abstinence rally held at the Queen’s Park Oval last week, attended by hundreds of secondary school students, was a good idea which we would like to see producing a national movement, germinating throughout the country’s school system. The links made with Louisiana’s programme on abstinence should be actively maintained. The message delivered by Dr Deregal Burbank, medical adviser to the Louisiana programme, contained a graphic account of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States. Where before the “sexual revolution” one in every 300 persons had an STD, today one in every four has such a disease. “The more you get around, the more you are going to get,” she warned. We must retrieve the idea that chastity is a precious and protective thing.