French Prometheus

Abstinence doesn't have a 100% success rate. When a man uses abstinence as his sole method of contraception but eventually has sex because he can't take the pressure anymore, that's a case when abstinence failed.

When assessing the success rate of abstinence, you have to consider ALL the people who use it, including those for whom it didn't work. The capability not to have sex over an extended period of time is an integral part of abstinence. When an abstinence-only person gives in to his natural and healthy sex urges and catches a STD as a consequence, abstinence fails.

Similarly, the capability to use a condom properly is an integral part of that method of contraception. When the condom breaks because the guy didn't put it correctly, that method fails.

If you only count the cases when abstinence is successful then you have to do the same with condom use. In a perfect world, those who don't want to have sex never give in to their urges (i.e. abstinence has a 100% success rate). In a perfect world, condoms never have any defect and those who use them are experts at it (i.e. condom use has a 100% success rate). But in the real world, each method has technical difficulties which result in a non-zero failure rate.

In Europe, where abstinence is not part of sex education, we have lower STD rates than in the US.

Finally, you can catch a potentially deadly STD even if you don't have sex (e.g. via blood transfusion, open wounds in contact with contaminated material, etc...) and condoms do have a very high success rate for nearly all STDs. The major exception is pubic lice ("crabs") but they don't kill people...

skepticgirl

It would make sense to ban if birth control didn't exist and women and children needed men to support them. Of course I dont know whether women with children but without men could have made it in that society...

Anat

Ryzo, regarding whether present day Jews consider premarital sex bad/sinful/not-permissible etc:
The Orthodox consider any physical contact between men and women who are not close relatives by blood or marriage as immodest and therefore not permissible. This is a problem for people in Orthodox communities who for whatever reason become less strict in observance while still living in such a community. For example in the city of Bnei Brak in Israel, which is the city with highest proportion of religious population there would be occasional cases of a young man getting beaten up by other youngsters for kissing his girlfriend in public. (I have heard from a friend who had lived there for a while that the city does all it can to limit opportunities for socialisation between members of opposite sexes - there are very few if any restaurants or any place where one can sit down for a meal; takeout is OK, though). Also the Orhodox wedding ceremony specifically mentions the prohibition to have sex with even one's betrothed, let alone anyone in a less formal relationship.

On the other hand the rabbis are aware of the fact that many people do have premarital sex and don't make a big deal of it. Interestingly, I once heard of a case where a common-law couple parted and the rabbis wanted them to get a formal divorce because there was a probability that their relationship might have progressed to a valid marriage (maybe the man bought the woman a ring at some time, I don't know the specifics).

I don't know the formal Conservative position, the Reform and 'leftwards' don't make a deal of premarital sex.

I also read a story a while back about Orthodox women in Israel who, for whatever reason reached a later age without marrying. Deciding that they were not likely to marry at their age they were considering non-marital relationships and wanted to purify in the ritual bath the way Orthodox married women do each month. There was a big controversy within the online Orthodox community about the whole idea.

Ryzo

Thanks for the info Anat.

Skepticgirl, please read the whole thread before you post, this has already been dealt with. Furthermore, the use of the word biblical instead of say historical or secular should provide a decent hint towards the type of reasons I am looking for.