Paying the Price For Free Sex
Feminism encourages women to be as sexually active as their male counterparts, insisting that they also reject all that societally-imposed guilt. But if women consider that to be sexual freedom, recent studies may make women rethink their definition of the word "free."
A study by researchers from the left-leaning Alan Guttmacher Institute found that, in Great Britain and the U.S.--as opposed to Third World countries, where teens often marry before first having sex--the vast majority of "sexually-experienced adolescents of both sexes have never been married." Unfortunately, the Guttmacher study, published in its International Family Planning Perspectives, found a double whammy waiting for sexually active young women. The researchers said data demonstrated the "possibly serious health and social consequences for women who begin to have intercourse while very young or not yet married."
One such social consequence, of course, was pregnancy and single motherhood for young women, threatening them with a lifetime of poverty. The study said the danger of such privation was very real for "adolescent women who are usually not able to support themselves, let alone any children they might have."
Another study from the Guttmacher Institute found clear evidence that sex outside marriage also increased a woman's risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease (STD). That elevated risk applied whether a sexually active woman had never been married, was married before but now was single, or living with a man outside marriage.
According to The Family in America, New Research, "just as taking up smoking has given today's liberated women lung cancer and heart disease, so indulging in fornication has infected many with disease and stranded many in poverty."
