Condoms do work — but abstinence is still a good thing

Religion creates problems when it becomes such a dominant force in our life that it masks reality and causes us to deny the existence of very basic facts. One example is the fact that, when used correctly and consistently, condoms can prevent the spread of HIV over 98 percent of the time (according to the most updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention information). Another fact is that in some regions of the world women have extramarital sex to stay alive — not because they enjoy it, not because they are in love or to procreate, not because "they have no more restraint than animals." They have sex because if they do not, they will die. This is a fact, a very basic fact that everyone, including Catholics, must understand if they want to make public proclamations about what people should do to prevent the spread of global HIV.

There is a huge difference between "prostitution" (especially considering the American concept involving fishnets), "premarital sex," "adultery" and "survival sex," by which I refer to the millions of women who have sex to barter for eggs, coal, meat, penicillin, etc. in impoverished nations. Although there may be "prostitutes" who have "chosen" that profession as a last resort, there is a separate issue of everyday women and girls sleeping with men (sometimes two or three a day) because that is their only possible form of payment. It would be great if these women could go to the local community college, pick up some new skills and get a well paying job, but such a scenario is not always reality.

This is not to say that culture needn't change. Throughout the world there are both ancient and more contemporary cultures and practices that persist that are fueling the AIDS epidemic. Examples include the traditions of the hijras and matas in India, sharing knives for circumcision in Lesotho and presenting a girl to the village on her first day of menses in Ghana. Although these cultural practices can partly explain the size of the epidemic in some nations, there are other important contributing factors, especially regarding condoms.

The great majority of the "10 percent failure rate" with condoms is due to human error. If someone does not put a condom on properly, take it off properly, use it only once or use the correct lubricant — among other mistakes — the risk of spillage, breakage and thus disease transmission is greatly increased. The problem is that neither adolescents nor adults are taught how to use condoms in much of the United States and many developing countries (most other industrialized nations have long recognized the value of education over ignorance). In many places in the United States this is because public schools are not allowed to teach anything but "abstinence only."

From a public health perspective, this is absolutely bizarre considering that no peer-reviewed, published study has ever shown a causal relationship between teaching kids about safe sex and increased sexual activity. Acknowledging that the majority of high school students have had sexual intercourse before graduating, the failure rate of abstinence is pretty high (as opposed to "zero"). It is also important to note that it is possible to teach adolescents how to use condoms while still focusing on an abstinence-based message. If morals are the bottom line, I wonder what system of morality prefers ignorance to knowledge that could help prevent hundreds of thousands of teen pregnancies and one of the highest HIV transmission rates in the Western world?

Outside of the United Stated (which assumedly has the resources to teach all adolescents how to have safer sex), many countries, including African nations, are in the middle of a crisis because of misinformation. Lies and misstatements of fact have clouded perspective of the epidemic. For years, South Africa's president claimed HIV did not cause AIDS; many countries worldwide face myths about the curative effects of sleeping with (raping) young virgins; it is not uncommon for Africans to think that rich white Americans invented AIDS to kill them off; and many of the world's people still do not know the basic facts about disease transmission. Amid all of the incorrect information already present, the added fallacy that condoms are not efficacious in slowing the spread of HIV, is close to murder — especially coming from one of the most prominent world religions' "official arbiter for the Church's stance on family issues."

The Catholic Church is not responsible for the HIV epidemic. The Catholic Church has done some magnificent things to help people with AIDS and to help people avoid getting AIDS. But what could be a shining reputation is inevitably tarnished by the Church's unwillingness to accept the facts that some people are going to have sex, for various reasons, no matter what, and most importantly that doing it more safely — with condoms — will slow the spread of disease, particularly HIV. Public statements that deny that condoms are effective encourage sexually active people to forgo using condoms because of the erroneous belief that they will be of no help. The fact is that such statements are indirectly killing people.

Robin Williams is a Wilson School major from Greenboro, N.C.