Meg Brown, Grand Forks, letter: Sex ed and birth control, not prayer and fasting

GRAND FORKS — Like Rod Lammer, I too have noticed the 40 Days for Life campaign’s signs urging North Dakotans to “pray and fast to end abortion” (“Advice for the faithful: Trust but verify,” letter, Page A4, Sept. 30).

I found myself asking how prayer and fasting compares to proven means of reducing abortions.

Unlike comprehensive sex education and access to birth control, neither prayer nor fasting has been shown to prevent abortion. Instead of depriving one’s self of nourishment or mentally soliciting supernatural intervention, individuals opposed to abortion should make contraceptives available and ensure that consumers know how to use them correctly.

But it’s no secret that access to contraception and complete sex education programs face the greatest resistance from Catholics and other religious conservatives.

Presumably, most people who display these “pray and fast” signs would like elective abortion to be illegal. But outlawing abortion doesn’t “end” it. A 2007 comprehensive international study by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute found that women undergo abortions at a comparable rate in nations where abortion is outlawed. The only effect of outlawing abortion is a greatly increased number of women who are maimed or killed from unsafe attempts.

The data from this and countless other studies shows that the best way to reduce abortions is through greater access to birth control.

Correctly using contraception almost completely eliminates the risk of unplanned pregnancy, but contraception and information won’t stop abortion if it isn’t made available. Randomized controlled studies have shown that abstinence-only programs lead to higher percentages of unplanned pregnancy and sexually-transmitted infections among teens.

Religious conservatives are doing a great disservice to their sons and daughters by keeping them uninformed.

We can all agree that unplanned pregnancies must be reduced to “end” abortion. Let’s invest our precious energy only in the most effective ways of doing so: sex education and birth control, not prayer or fasting.

Meg Brown

Tags: in the mail, sex education, opinion, education, contraception, abortion, health