AIDS: A Modern Plague on Youth

Every three minutes, a teenage girl acquires AIDS.

That’s 20 every hour, 480 every day, 14,400 every month, and 172,800 every year.

That’s a great deal of innocence lost.

A United Nations (UN) representative calls it a “crisis of health.” It’s that and so much more.

“In most countries, women and girls lack access to information, to services, or even just the power to say no to unsafe sex,” according to the UN spokesperson.

Young women, ages 15 to 19, acquire AIDS at twice the rate male teens do. But acquiring AIDS is no less tragic for young men. They may also lack the power to say no.

The distribution of condoms reduces the rate of AIDS, however, only “under the right conditions.” And those conditions would include not only education but also enough regard for a sex partner to take the step of protection. Still, a condom is never a guarantee.

“Safe sex” is a misnomer. There is no safe sex outside of lifelong monogamy. The price these young people pay? They pay with their lives–for someone else’s moment of pleasure.

Last year, 130,000 youngsters aged 19 and under died from AIDS, while 430,000 — almost 50 every hour — were newly infected, the [UN] agency said.”

The UN proposes to “reach young people and curb the epidemic among them.” But how is that possible when they lack the power to say no?

The solution is not in distributing more condoms and convincing people to use them. It’s in convincing people not to use other people.

And the source of that understanding comes only from the Gospel.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

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Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Womb for Rent, Child for Sale

“One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. . . . From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.”  Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

We’ve all heard the wonderful stories. Married couples who were unable to conceive become parents. A generous woman endures the discomforts of pregnancy to give them the ultimate gift. And then we imagine–a happily ever after ending.

And for some, it is a dream come true. Life as they had imagined it would be. It just began a different way.
But that’s not what surrogacy means for many children. Nothing like happily ever after.

Focus on the Family reports: “It is an unregulated industry that takes advantage of the bodies, health and altruistic nature of women for money. The reality is that without regulation, stories about surrogacy and artificial reproduction may become even more bizarre and exploitative.
And such was the tragic beginning for infant twin girls born to an Australian couple. The father had urged his wife to abort a pregnancy early in their marriage. He was not interested in having children. He became interested after he began to assault his young nieces.
His own babies were 27 days old when he began to violate them.  Their abuse lasted seven months. His collection of 13,000 images of child pornography included 300  photos of his own daughters.
There are other horror stories too.

Much of the world is waking up to this abuse. Even though the surrogacy industry is lucrative–$520 million a year in India alone–nations are moving to eradicate it or at least prohibit it to foreigners. With many countries limiting surrogacy, people are looking for surrogate mothers within the United States–where restrictions are few and protections fewer yet.
Surrogacy exploits poor women who are sometimes coerced into participating in the process and may be left with heartache or medical problems. It exploits children, especially since anyone can become a surrogate parent. Even pedophiles.

And while children “can be abused in any setting . . . they are not equally likely to be abused in every setting. By an order of magnitude they are least likely to be abused when living with their two married, biological parents.”
Even when it’s legal, surrogacy is legally messy.
A surrogate mother in California recently sued the “parents” of the triplets she was carrying. The parents wanted her to selectively abort one of the babies. She wanted to adopt the third child herself. But she signed a contract that allows the parents to decide.

Another woman moved to Michigan to give birth to a baby girl whose “parents” wanted to abort her because of her disabilities.
Legalization and regulation would seem to hold only more of such situations.
Medical progress is amazing. But progress isn’t always a step forward. In Huxley’s Brave New World, children were mass produced commodities who filled slots in society. No one loved them. They did not love. They existed only to be used by society and each other.
We haven’t gone as far as Huxley’s world yet. Neither have we drawn a line on when medical progress is human regression.

Perhaps it’s not too late to draw a line. If India and Thailand can stop injustice, so can the rest of us.


Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Continue reading “Womb for Rent, Child for Sale”

Flying on Splinted Wings

Yet those who wait for the Lord Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary. Isaiah 40:31. 
Flying was the “forgotten dream” of a bird with a broken wing.
As he was walking one day, my grandson saw a bird that couldn’t fly. He wrote the incident in verse. The wounded creature could see other birds aloft but could not join them in the “fields of blue and white.”
People are supposed to fly. I don’t mean in the theoretical sense of the old saying that if God had intended our flight, He would have given us wings.
He did give us wings–wings of heart and soul. Sometimes, life crushes those wings. Crushed spirits can only watch others fly. Pornography is a monster that crushes the spirits of men, women, and children.
But America is double minded about pornography. Here is an example: Continue reading “Flying on Splinted Wings”

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