The “conventional wisdom” prevalent in the United States, European Nations, and the United Nations is that the best way to prevent HIV/AIDS in Africa (or anywhere, for that matter) is to practice “safe sex,” that is, to make use of condoms and other prophylactic devises. The Catholic Church is regularly criticized for its failure to urge the use of condoms and “safe sex” in Africa and is blamed for the AIDS “epidemic” in sub-Sahara Africa.

In 1960 the Food and Drug Administration approved the oral contraceptive known as “The Pill.” To celebrate the Pill’s 50th birthday Elaine Tyler May, Regents Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Minnesota, has published America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (New York: Basic Books, a Member of the Perseus Books Group, 2010, 214 pp.).

“The Social Costs of Pornography: A Statement of Findings and Recommendations” is a booklet, edited by Mary Eberstadt and Mary Ann Layden and published this year by the Witherspoon Institute. The booklet summarizes a consultation of 54 scholars held in Princeton, N.J. in December 2008 sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute and co-sponsored by the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. A sampling of participating scholars includes Hadley Arkes of Amherst University, Gerard V. Bradley of Notre Dame University’s Law School, J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas, Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Foundation, Jean Bethke Elshrain of the University of Chicago, John Finnis of Oxford University, Robert George of Princeton University, William Hurlbut, M.D., of Stanford University Medical School, Mary Ann Layden of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Psychiatry, Margarita Mooney of the University of North Carolina, David Novak of the University of Toronto, Roger Scruton of Oxford University, Gladys Sweeney of the Institute for the Psychological Studies, and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia.

Andrew Koppelman and others say “It certainly does!”
Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, and others claim that contraception definitely prevents abortion. This April (2010) Koppelman posted a commentary, “How the Religious Right Promotes Abortion,” [1] that was immediately attacked byspokespersons of the “Religious Right” (e.g., Michael New of the Witherspoon Institute). Koppelman judges it to be “astoundingly stupid and tragic” to argue over this. Continuing, he said, “One of the rare areas of common ground between opponents and supporters of abortion rights is that neither side thinks that unintended pregnancy is a good thing.  We should be able to come together on measures that would actually reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancy, and thus, inevitably, reduce the abortion rate.  That might even help the anti-abortion cause in the long run, because it would reduce the number of American women who have had abortions…. Yet instead, we are having this silly argument.  It is dispiriting.”

The April 10, 2010 bulletin of iMAPP Marriage News [1] highlighted this issue. It focused on the Witherspoon Foundation’s recent conference and book, The Social Costs of Pornography.[2]

After summing up Marriage News’s report of the Witherspoon Foundation’s conference and book on the social costs of pornography, I will present the masterful analysis of pornography and “pornovision” offered by a prominent philosopher/theologian during the last quarter of the 20th century, namely, Karol Wojtyla, better known as Pope John Paul II.

Duke University Champions
Most Americans know that Duke University’s Men’s basketball team is the 2010 champion of college basketball. But few know that Dr. Monique Chireau, a Duke University expert in obstetrics and gynecology, is a champion of abstinence only programs as the way to help teenage girls forbear having sex, whether allegedly “safe” or “less unsafe,” and as a result avoid getting pregnant and at the same time avoid contracting an STD or sexually transmitted disease.

1.    Ms. O’Leary, can you begin by helping us understand what is meant by feminism, and whether there are particular distinctions among feminists that are important to recognize?

It is important to distinguish liberal feminism from radical feminism and these from the search for authentic womanhood based on the truth about the human person.

If you were looking for another indicator of the cultural malaise to which our young are subjected today, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) delivered last week.   At the 2008 National STD Prevention Conference in Chicago, March 11th, they issued results of a nationally representative survey which found that slightly more that one in four (26%), or 3.2 million, teenage girls between ages 14 and 19 have contracted a sexually transmitted disease (STD).  Among those infected, about 15% had more than one disease.  Some groups had about twice the national average – nearly half of young African American women or adolescents in the survey had an STD.