Don’t they know…

When I went to university in southern Ontario, I met my first “born again”. My upbringing had been rich with meetings and befriendings of different folk. Yet, for whatever reason, I had never had an occasion to befriend someone who was, as my parents called, a fundamentalist.

Debbie, a fellow engineering student, was a Mary Tyler Moore, cheerleader, a cute-as-can-be Born Again. At first, I admit, I tried to ignore her. She was really too cute for my cynical self. The thing was, there just wasn’t enough women studying engineering back then to ignore her. So, what initially started off as tidbits of small talk in the student lounge between classes became, over time, warm heart-felt comradeship.

A few years down the line, on the eve of her wedding to a member of her church, she confessed that she was scared of getting married. After some probing on my part, she told me that she and her husband-to-be had decided to wait to have sex until after they were married. I was rather shocked. The concept of abstinence until marriage was hard for me to understand. It wasn’t the sex that scared her.

It was the fact that she feared that on her wedding night her husband would realise she wasn’t a virgin. Then, yes then, she confided in me that not only had she had sex before with her one-and-only boyfriend from high school, but that she had become pregnant twice over their four-year relationship and had two abortions. She became pregnant because, she and her boyfriend kept on pretending they were not having sex, when they were. For them to take precautions or use contraceptives would have been impossible thing to do, for it would mean admitting they were actually sexually active, which they couldn’t admit, since they were both poster teenagers for their churches.

I remembered all this today when I read this short article in Huffington Post. Amongst other things it says,

“Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.”

I thought of Debbie and the guilt and horror she experienced as a teenager of those two pregnancies and abortions. It was a deep sense of guilt she carried her whole adult life. I wish someone had helped her along the way.

She and her husband went on to have six children; all of whom she loved dearly, cared for greatly, even home schooled. Yet, she told me, she never forgave herself for those two abortions. That is, until she died last year from breast cancer. I hope the God she believed in has granted her peace now.

To finish off, I want to recall a conversation I had with my young daughter (13 years old) about Ms. Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy. My daughter, in all her innocent wisdom, couldn’t understand why there was such a media hoopla about Bristol Palin getting pregnant. When I told her about how people like Ms. Palin do not condone sex before marriage, nor encourage proper sex education or planned parenthood, my daughter’s puzzlement grew. I told her they believed teenagers should make pledges of abstinence.

My daughter reaction to this idea was total disbelief, “Don’t they know that sex is natural?” This from a girl who has no experience with sex, but knows deep down that a some point in time she will, and no pledge of abstinence is going to stop her.

To Debbie, in fond memory.