Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Name that scandal Milwaukee, Wis. To the Editors: Perhaps the most damaging result of the Reagan administration's overtures to Iran has been the strain it has put on pundits trying...
...We do not claim that this is not true for some women...
...Luella Klein of the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists discovered that teen sex and pregnancies are less the result of "ignorance" than of loneliness, a lack of self-esteem, peer and societal pressures, and a lack of good character...
...A number of experts asked, if the bishops object to the counter-city use of nuclear weapons and the counter-force use of nuclear weapons, what kind of weapons do they want to make up the U.S...
...The possibility that such tacit acceptance may be causally related to the need for schools to teach about "pre-natal care," disease, and contraception, seems to have eluded her, as does the evidence that social trends are not necessarily irreversible...
...To the Editors: The critique of the San-dinista government in your editorial ["Uncivil Targets," April 10] is biased, showing no insight into the political and social history of Nicaragua, including our dominance of that country since the Marines landed in 1912 and the coJUtr-ring dominance of the elite famiUWui national affairs...
...In any event, we were very clear to point out that this was just one of several very tentative indicators which "suggest the approach of a great deal of confusion, upheaval, and even rebellion involving Catholic family life...
...We need a change of heattPfcd of viewpoint...
...It is precisely because of these blurred distinctions that black educators should resist the tendency to reinforce them by insisting that athletic prowess continue to be the key to college admission, and by implication the ticket out of the ghetto...
...I believe that reason must be appealed to, which is why I suggested that the push for sexual abstinence be made stronger and broader in the city's course...
...To my knowledge, such evidence doesn't exist...
...is vital to resolving or preventing it...
...By contrast, in earlier eras, when sex-ed courses were unknown, contraceptives less freely available, and out-of-wedlock pregnancy bore a social stigma, the unwed birth rate among blacks was lower than it is among whites today...
...To the Editors: According to Karen Sue Smith, the sex-education curriculum currently under attack by religious leaders in (Continued on page 394) 370: Commonweal (Continued from page 370) New York City has been in place since 1967...
...Yet, if homosexuality were to become the dominant "sexual preference," the human race would become extinct or dependent for its reproduction on medical technology...
...They hear an apparent attempt to deter them from being sexually active, then they hear adults giving them preventati ve information (from which they hear that we must be expecting them to become sexually active...
...A combination of both is a naf tv foe...
...I think we have to examine our ambivalence as a culture and as a church about why we do not challenge them similarly when it comes to sexuality...
...To the Editors: Implicit in the arguments favoring birth control clinics in schools are two misguided assumptions: (1) that teen pregnancies result from "ignorance...
...In our current anti-drug campaign, we do not hear advice to young people on how to "lessen the risk" of serious drug problems...
...In earlier stages "Iran-gate" was tried, but apparently found to be too rusty...
...Of course, such works did not carry the stamp of teaching authority as does the bishops' pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace," nor were they widely propagated, as was the pastoral letter, in a systematic educational campaign carried on through Catholic schools and colleges with the approval and support of many bishops...
...Garvey appears to admire the hellfire-and-damnation breeding that made Jerry Lee Lewis and the fictional O'Connor character smug in their assurance of "sin" and in a destructive, vindictive moral dualism...
...GE executives might have asked, what kind of weapons do you want us to produce...
...Only on the basis of such a tone can I point out what seems to have eluded Ms...
...English Catholics who have written extensively on the specific issues of nuclear strategy include Walter Stein, Roger Rushton, and E.B.F...
...One could mention also the work in this period of Justus George Lawler, William Nagle, and John C. Ford, not to mention non-Catholic scholars such as Paul Ramsey and Ted Weber...
...Mainland has yet to spell out...
...In questioning whether it makes any sense to admire someone for being both ambitious and altruistic, Carlin seems to forget about his prime example, A-braham Lincoln...
...398: Commonweal Garvey reports approvingly) "damns" country-rock singer Jerry Lee Lewis for "booze, drugs, and bad marriages" while placing his "pig-ignorant" cousin Swaggart and similar ilk among the "saved...
...While an illiterate parent or racist parent can learn to read or cast off prejudice, a parent's marriage after a child is born out of wedlock does not change the child's own self-image, if that has been determined in part by being illegitimate...
...Father Hehir was apparently aware of this in 1984 when he wrote, "the intensity of public discussion of both nuclear strategy and the ethics of strategy in the 1980s should not obscure the fact that both subjects have a rich history in the nuclear age" (cf...
...Mainland fails to mount any argument for her own causes, like the immorality of sex outside marriage (a point I certainly did not argue against, though I did say this was a value which society at large now enjoys no consensus on, though I wish it would, particularly as teens are concerned...
...To the Editors: Dr...
...They are simply and quite forcefully told to "Just say no...
...Why, then, do educated elites remain convinced that ignorance about sex is the cause of the problems, and that their solution lies with a curriculum that, from the passages cited in Smith's article, is both morally and intellectually vacuous...
...To the Editors: Your editorial comments in the February 27 issue raised questions about some findings in The American Catholic People (Doubleday) written by George Gallup, Jr., and myself...
...Formerly, they had always been wggjut power...
...they are not just numbers thrown out without a context...
...To the Editors: I wish to congratulate Karen Sue Smith on a well written and informative article, "Sex Education: a Matter of Body & Soul" [April 10...
...Had spiritual fresh air from our deist founding fathers reached these two, or any suspicion that they share in the creation of values, and are not just androids with judgments predetermined by a primitive script, perhaps their life-outcomes would seem less sinister, whatever their choices...
...But Ms...
...second, they have not persuaded their people that they — the bishops — know what they are doing and are not acting, intentionally or otherwise, in a partisan manner...
...and someone to love them in return...
...Granted, but Hehir fails to mention another cost, i.e., that wherever the bishops teachings specifically mix ethical principles and empirical analysis, their conclusions (and in "The Challenge of Peace" this applied to all but one of the specific conclusions) had to be qualified as prudential judgments...
...Father Dulles wishes to examine "the price of such specificity" in pastoral teaching and finds the price too high...
...They are being told, more or less, that premature sexual activity is unwise, perhaps unhealthy, and certainly inadvisable...
...I suggest, rather, that teens are getting a double message...
...but they have not given up their belief it is still their church...
...Bibliolatry, savage chauvinism, and turning people into conformist, "moral" sheep appear, on the face of it, a thousand times more indecent — and more dangerous to planetary civilization — than the venial deviations that outrage fundamentalists and so scandalize Garvey...
...In this they are no different from the bishops of France, the UK and Germany...
...As well, I would agree that a marriage of altruism and self-interest is indeed problematic...
...We are the ones who nqgUto change...
...First, the bishops have obviously not articulated a clear simple rationale for speaking out on public issues...
...I have not reviewed the major Catholic theological journals in this period, as Father Hehir has, but perhaps their editors were at fault...
...Take the illegitimate child...
...You say combined pressure should be put on the Sandinistas to make ^lm change...
...The editorial cited the figure that in 1985, 66 percent of Catholic women described being married with children — with or without a job — as the ideal lifestyle...
...In general, we did not minimize the challenge the church faces in its treatment of women...
...Mainland's insinuations — I am pleased we both find the current state of sexual conduct and vulnerability among young people an issue worth grappling over...
...Johansen, The Nuclear Arms Debate: Ethical and Political Implications, World Order Study Program, 1984...
...An editorial refers to "the Iran-confraspiracy" and farther along a book reviewer calls it "the Iragua scandal...
...Mainland's excessive belief in the adolescent myth of themselves as impervious to disaster makes futile not only appeals to reason (advanced in drivers'-ed courses or in the schools' description of teen sexual activity as "unwise" or "dangerous") but also appeals to morality...
...Other times {vide Garvey and Elred) it shows us that bowing and scraping, or singing wistful old hymns — perhaps "Nearer My God, To Thee" — remain, rather, the order of the day on that fateful vessel...
...What is more, Ms...
...It vss&m&o a big step towards democracy...
...And he'casually dismisses the heroic examples of the Old Testament through association with "the vulgar Calvinism of the Puritans...
...At any rate, Hehir could have looked a bit further...
...Meanwhile, Surgeon General Koop hopes to prevent AIDS by giving sex-ed courses to third-graders...
...KAREN SUE SMITH Black athletes Chicago, 111...
...He then goes on to argue that the two notions are essentially irreconcilable, and that we as Americans cherish our "success," our "individualism," at the cost of our "sanctity...
...We made the point that we did not measure the degree of anger among those who were angry...
...I note two attempts in the February 27 Commonweal...
...Mainland seems to favor...
...Perhaps unknown to the pope in the summer of 1982 when he delivered his judgment on deterrence, the American bishops were preparing either to forbid or to question any use of such weapons...
...Nor does she exhibit any skepticism about the currently fashionable notion that the "self-esteem" of students from broken and/or "reconstituted" homes may be threatened by presenting the traditional family as the model...
...I doubt that such measures would prevent the problems about which Ms...
...As a lawyer old enough to recall when they were known to be a less than totally effective method of contraception I suspect that it's only a matter of time before someone who develops AIDS despite the use of condoms files a lawsuit...
...Carlin is right to assert that virtue must never play second to ambition...
...This contradiction suggests that the problem lies more with the style of the bishops' political involvement than the substance of the issues involved...
...Question: should the bishops put forth views on how the nuclear deterrent should be structured...
...Do drug abuse courses encourage drug abuse...
...But neither recognition, nor the proposed cure, creates the problem it intends to solve...
...Carlin never denies that Lincoln in some way managed to unite the two...
...FLORENCE WA©MR 19 June 1987 399...
...Mainland hints, conclusive evidence to support such a claim, evidence that isolates the program as the cause, was not referred to in her letter...
...There's no evidence that parents, whatever their own behavior, want schools to be "non-censorious" about teen-age sex...
...Instead, in your pages, he truckled to spiritual authority, half-apologized for his kind, and sought redress...
...Mark Naison's piece, "A Failed Game Plan" [April 10], struck me since it dealt with the issue of sports in minority communities...
...Mainland's own analogies falter...
...Some theologians are now questioning whether this is an "exceptionless norm...
...To the Editors: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...And while I may be among the "mushy, intellectual, Catholic, liberal elite" — to string together Ms...
...As a homosexual Elred once received a certain "grace," it would appear...
...As for "recognition" itself as a "cause," recognition of any problem (drug abuse, teen suicide, etc...
...The point here...is to dramatize the urgency of blacks taking the responsibility for reasserting the primacy of certain basic values in our communities...
...Somej^ps do not want to lose power, and sojnpn our government do not want to losas^p-trol...
...Nor am I willing to throw out sex-ed courses (which neither the pope nor bishops suggested), take contraceptives off the market, or return to the social stigma — rightly called a double standard — applied to unmarried mothers of any age, as Ms...
...Carlin, however, contends that the two ideals are almost completely contradictory, and, as a result of the suggestion, carries his argument too far...
...I believe they hear two contradictory messages...
...2) that it is the legitimate function of the schools to dispense contraceptives...
...WheJBtis change occurred, some members ciHbe elite withdrew from the governmefllWt the same time and for the same reJMi, La Prensa changed its editorial (gflfy from pro- to anti-Sandinista...
...It's quite obvious that the Key Cake Caper has left American journalism groping for words...
...EDWARD DOHERTY What I resent Crest wood, Ky...
...I only have one section with which I would like to take issue...
...Your editorial cites isolated reports on Catholic attitudes about their relationship to God and asks, "Just what does this mean...
...To quote Hehir, "if one uses the standard literature of the nuclear debate for the past thirty, years it could not be demonstrated that a variety of groups and institutions had made the moral assessment of strategic policy a central theme...
...To the Editors: Perhaps the most damaging result of the Reagan administration's overtures to Iran has been the strain it has put on pundits trying to come up with a name for it...
...Mainland might espouse...
...Mainland...
...Better far to alert the moral police to the homoeroticism classically implicit in their own institutions and religious orders (See Hugh Ross Williamson's useful The Arrow and the Sword...
...The English Catholic weekly paper, The Tablet, devoted considerably more space to discussion of these issues than did Theological Studies...
...I am embarrassed to have to point out that difference of opinion does not necessarily imply intellectual or moral blindness or ineptitude...
...one can understand his desperation, but it seems just as likely to give them nightmares...
...This could not fail to carry some cost in credibility with certain segments of the interested public...
...If school sex-ed programs have caused an increase in sexual activity, pregnancy, or disease, as Ms...
...Regarding the first assumption, a recent study by Dr...
...It was this very change igpuc power structure that sparked the p|g0Qt difficulties of the Sandinistas...
...Nor does she appear to realize that school systems across the nation have been less than candid with parents about the content of sex-ed courses because few want to provoke the outcry likely to ensue when parents learn, for example, that homosexuality is being presented as "an alternative lifestyle...
...Furthermore, having spent several years as a divorced custodial parent, I have little doubt that most single parents are keenly aware of the advantages of two-parent households and hope their children will some day enjoy them...
...it obviously is...
...It is interesting that when the grants refer to the overthrow of Soomp, they call the struggle "our revolutigH" which they perceive as an ongoing pW> ess...
...1 think Father Dulles would say no, and I would agree...
...I am fully aware that we will never eradicate teen pregnancies...
...Surely we do Him no service if we surrender the world to those who have no faith in Him...
...One reason may be that Catholics like Smith not only fail to challenge the prevailing secular wisdom but uncritically accept its assumptions...
...Consequently, when schools supply children with contraceptives, they transcend their legitimate function, undermine parental rights, responsibilities, and authority, and simply address the symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem, which is our popular sexual attitudes and practices...
...Proponents of "safe sex'' on the campuses and elsewhere are pushing condoms...
...Then they are being told in other ways how they can "lessen their risk...
...Obviously, correlation does not prove causation, but its "non-judgmental" approach to teen-age sex has clearly been unsuccessful in preventing, or even diminishing, pregnancies among unwed teenagers, abortions, fatherless households, and sexually transmitted diseases, all of which have increased...
...But we did not suggest that the economics pastoral would meet little opposition...
...TIMOTHY P. SCHILLING Back to the sources West River, Md...
...Professor William O'Brien, of Georgetown University, right under the bishops' noses, produced two books dealing precisely with specific problems of nuclear policy from a just war perspective, covering the same ground with the same kind of moral analysis that Father Hehir demands...
...Where does that leave Ms...
...One example of this cost was the puzzlement which resulted from the bishops' condemnation of counter-city or counter-value nuclear war at the same time as they were objecting to weapons with a "hard target kill capability" that could be viewed as first-strike weapons...
...for many blacks it is often a difference without a distinction...
...Just what a denial of problematic realities like these would accomplish, Ms...
...Mainland and I share concern...
...We wrote: "Catholic women want much more from their church...
...Those, including Catholics, who believe that one must be "non-judgmental" about ideas and behavior, as well as people, will remain convinced that such intellectual mushiness connotes '' compassion.'' mar y mainland The author replies: Logically speaking, Ms...
...It seems not to have occurred to Smith that the only "consen394: Commonweal sus" threatened by religious leaders who are urging schools to teach that sex outside of marriage is wrong and to present the two-parent family as an achievable goal is that among the so-called curriculum "experts" and educators...
...She, too, thinks that schools must "recognize" the reality of teen-age (and pre-teen) sex, and denies that such recognition "necessarily" implies acceptance...
...Concerning the second assumption, it is the legitimate responsibility of parents and physicians — and not the schools — to provide children with birth control information and pills...
...To the Editors: I must confess to some puzzlement at the way J. Bryan Hehir ["Principles & Politics," March 27] deals with Avery Dulles's apprehension that the bishops, in recent pastoral letters, have tried to be too detailed and specific in addressing particular points of policy...
...And yet somehow I think it is possible to want to fully realize one's gifts for the glory of God...
...it was the judgment rendered by Pope John Paul II that nuclear "deterrence based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable" ("The Challenge of Peace" S.173...
...I felt that Dr...
...Here is an issue that it should be possible to debate and to resolve without the benefit of detailed, specialized knowledge of nuclear weapons or strategy...
...Unfortunately, the defendant will be a manufacturer...
...NORRIS MERCHANT Our revolution Lake wood, N.J...
...Could the demonstrators have responded, citing the pastoral letter...
...Frankly, we think this is too good to be true...
...I see no reason to assert either position, for I do not believe any sex-ed program is a cure-all or a substitute for the home and church...
...Most surveys on the subject suggest that a young black stands a better chance of becoming a brain surgeon than an NBA champion, yet the contrary myth persists...
...I wrote 19 June 1987: 395 an article in the August, 1986 issue of The Christian Science "Monitor which addressed similar issues...
...BUD JOHNSON Sex-ed messages Beaumont, Tex...
...Deterrence is the strategy of threatening retaliation with all or part of the whole range of strategic nuclear weapons in the U.S...
...Mainland: that a person who has looked at the problems, the curriculum, and the criticisms of it, can reasonably differ from what Ms...
...Yet is would be unfair and misleading not to acknowledge that these scholars were at work and laying the groundwork for the pastoral letter...
...Naison's article seriously diminished the necessity for blacks in particular, to de-emphasize the importance of athletics, and instead to insist emphatically upon academic achievement...
...Drivers'-ed courses foster recklessness...
...Meanwhile, the New Republic labels it "Iranamok," Time talks about "Iranscam," while Newsweek prosaically reports on "the arms scandal...
...The most significant and far-reaching conclusion of that pastoral letter, however, did not derive from any sophisticated ethical analysis of complicated strategic concepts or weapon systems...
...Acquiescing to the cliche' that "they're going to do it anyway" is to soft-sell the reality of human sexuality, and in effect, to let our young people down by not holding before them admittedly difficult yet noble ideals...
...Hehir believes, "a social ethic stated at this (sic) level of generality will fail to engage the issues it must address...
...nuclear deterrent...
...For the most part, teenage girls become pregnant because they want someone to love...
...We noted on page 184: "On one hand, a majority of lay Catholics agree with positions taken by the bishops on issues such as arms control, Central America, abortion, education, and economic policy...
...Mainland's tone, illustrated by the phrases: "Catholics like Smith uncritically acgept," "seems to have eluded her," "nor does she exhibit any skepticism," "not to have occurred to Smith," "nor does she appear to realize...
...Midgeley, whose com19 June 1987: 397 prehensive The Natural Law Tradition and the Theory of International Relations (1975) included an extensive discussion of nuclear war and nuclear deterrence...
...Certainly there is a great deal of truth 396: Commonweal to Carlin's latter observation: the "American dream" means to us success and security, and not radical selflessness...
...and it has very little to do with white racism...
...on the other hand, there is a strong resistance to the church's being involved in the political arena...
...Your editorial cited only part of the figures we used to suggest a growing confusion among Catholic women about the roles families should play in their lives...
...In the end, the bishops, having in effect said no to virtually any use of such weapons, pronounced the threat — in the name of deterrence — to use them morally acceptable...
...Admittedly those proscriptions rested on judgments about the nature of the weapons and how they would be used...
...The fact is that during this period the work of American, British, Dutch, and German Catholic scholars was quite abundant...
...Debate continues as to its cause or causes...
...Cannot David and Solomon be models of virtue for Catholics too...
...As the black columnist William Raspberry has pointed out, Washington D.C., where sex-ed courses are mandatory, has one of the highest birth rates among unwed teenagers in the nation...
...The greater the mix of strategic analysis and ethical analysis the stronger the qualification...
...Is it the fear of being stigmatized as "homophobic" that dissuades Catholics from pointing out that AIDS offers compelling evidence for the rationality of traditional moral standards...
...One must also take exception, in one respect, to the comments of Stephen Elred ["Gay-Rights/Gay Plight...
...Father Hehir agrees that "how one calculates the costs is the essence of the debate...
...The "sins" listed itvfllir editorial look different from the pegBfe-ti ve of the peasants who now have £Me-sentatives in the General AssejgMy...
...arsenal...
...all NATO nations where governments are committed to the policy of nuclear deterrence and if need be, to the first use of nuclear weapons...
...If we are serious in saying that Len Bias's death should not be in vain, then, as Larry Hawkins, founder of the Institute for Athletics and Education, has observed, "we need programs that will teach athletes how to spell 'jump shot' rather than how to shoot it...," because a mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste...
...Some of those comments deserve a response: Noting that we pointed out that Catholics continue to hold liberal political positions you said, "If so, the bishops should anticipate no real opposition by the rank and file to their pastoral letter on the economy...
...At least then they might have grown more godlike, less prone to snuffle before religious tyrants a lot more "Satanic" than any individuals given to drink, drugs, or lawlessness...
...It used to be a tenet of Catholic theology that one may not even conditionally intend actions that are wrong in the doing...
...For whatever reason, or by whichever path, he found himself delivered, at the price, no doubt, of pariahhood and suffering, from the spiritual Corregidors of the complacent and the conquered...
...Educated Catholics, particularly those who are political liberals, frequently seem virtually indistinguishable from the non-religious when it comes to sexual ethics...
...You note that we claim to refute the myth that Catholic women are in a state of "revolt" by suggesting that young Catholic women are staying away from parish life because of limited roles available to them...
...Most troublesome in the letter is Ms...
...Father Dulles has a point...
...In the book, these findings are reported along with others which show that the religious "intensity factor" among Catholics is lower than that among Protestants...
...However, there is a difference between looking the other way or promoting license and an ongoing attempt to develop character, self-restraint, and self-esteem among our young people...
...A book edited by Nagle, Morality and Modern Warfare (1960), carries an eighteen-page bibliography...
...As I wrote in my Monitor article: For most whites, there is an awareness, however dim, of the difference between a pop idol and a role model...
...Several years ago a group of Catholics in Connecticut demonstrated outside a General Electric factory, citing the pastoral letter, protesting the fact that the factory was producing warheads for "first-strike" weapons...
...I took no position on the issue of whether a student's self-esteem is threatened by a school's stressing the traditional family as model...
...CHARLES BALSAM Director, Family Life Ministry Diocese of Beaumont Clinics in schools Arlington Heights, 111...
...Homosexual saints and martyrs doubtless died in vain unless their contemporary heirs refuse to become pale imitations of bourgeois heterosexuals simply because the uncomprehending church claims there is no other way...
...Mainland's first point — that the New York City sex-ed curriculum has not prevented the worrisome list of sex-related problems — is nothing more than an unprovable assertion which could be argued in reverse: that, had the program not been in effect, problems might have been even greater...
...PRESTON GREENE DePaul University Painting by number Burke, Va...
...Sometimes Commonweal has alerted us, via a rather frank Catholic philosopher, to the proposition that trying to salvage Catholic dogma today is like polishing brass on the Titanic...
...In other words, the bishops were starting from scratch...
...The amount of writing devoted to the ethics of nuclear policy . . . from 1959 through 1980 when the bishops began their work is embarrassingly scant (I count two articles in Theological Studies from 1959-1980...
...For too many, sex is not a celebration of life and love — as it should be — but simply a tool of masturbatory and voyeuristic gratification...
...writes in his column ["The Lincoln Myth;' February 13]that "Lincoln is our great national model of both altruism and self-interest...
...By the same logic, one should refrain from teaching children of illiterates to read and condemning racial discrimination to the children of the prejudiced...
...To the Editors: As a person of Anglo-Catholic background once deceived enough in my ecumenical bliss to find all Catholicisms moving in the direction of a more genuine Christianity, I resent John Garvey's equivocating appraisal of Jimmy Swaggart ["Truth Flashes," December 26...
...This task will not be easy, but I feel a further encouragement of athletic prowess is precisely what we do not need at this critical juncture in the history of black Americans...
...HAVEN BRADFORD GOW Curriculum woes Stanford, Calif...
...Smith states that, since some teens will become sexually active, that they must be taught about contraception and other related issues, and that "such a recognition and response does not, in itself, constitute a philosophy that sexual activity is acceptable...
...Few experienced parents would be so fatuous as to suppose that adolescents, who are characteristically convinced that disasters befall other people, are likely to be dissuaded from engaging in sexual activity by warnings that it is "unwise" and "dangerous...
...JIM CASTELLI Lincoln's marriage Princeton, N.J...
...Totally condemned by a canting tradition that has annihilated literally millions of "heretics," "witches," "Sodomites," Jews, "new World" pagans, and other undesirables, Elred had been awarded the splendorous, indeed divine, opportunity to fend for himself, spiritually — vindicating and redeeming centuries of the damned...
...What made this figure particularly interesting was the figure you didn't cite — this represented a decline from 82 percent in 1982...
...Instead of encouraging premarital sex by permitting schools to dispense contraceptives, families, churches, schools, and social organizations must courageously affirm — in word and deed — the sacredness of sex, marriage, family, and human life...
...This judgment has emerged as the most controversial of any put forward in the pastoral letter...
...I evaluate such cur-riculums, not on their absolute efficaciousness in preventing pregnancy, but on what they can do developmentally to promote mature and responsible young people...
...Many of us perceive no "truth flashes" in a system that (as Mr...
...In fact, I find it somewhat providential that adoption would not be possible if it were not for such pregnancies...
Vol. 114 • June 1987 • No. 12
