Ut

Abstinence doesn't protect you 100% against STDs even if you follow it. You can catch AIDS by intraveinous drug use or a blood transfusion and you can catch herpes by kissing on the cheek.

STD doesn't mean it is transmitted exclusively by sex

Ultron

hehe

It just protects you from getting it sexually, unless you engage in sex.

Loren Pechtel

Plenty of reasons.

1) Knowing the risks and how to protect yourself.

2) While it's not really something a male needs to learn about in order to enjoy it, it can be a different story for a female. A male who knows nothing of pleasing their partner is not likely to do so.

Jat

I can think of 7 billion reasons.

LHP Adept

This is a MYTH! Latex condoms do not have pores, only archaic animal-skin or -intestine condoms do (or rather did, practically nobody outside the third world uses them anymore). This is one of the main reasons for using latex for condoms.

lpetrich

If water has a hard time getting through, then viruses and sperm cells will have an even harder time.

Sizes:

Water molecule: 0.278 nm
HIV (AIDS virus): 120 nm
Human sperm cells:
- head length: 4.5 microns
- head width: 3 microns
- tail length: 50 microns
White blood cells: 10 microns
Human egg cells: 200 microns

I've listed white blood cells because AIDS viruses like to live inside of some of them.

Let's scale a water molecule to 1 mm, the size of a sand grain.

An AIDS virus - 30 cm (1 foot) - the size of a basketball
A sperm cell's head - 10m * 15 m (30 ft * 45 ft) - the size of a typical house

So if sand grains cannot get through, neither can basketballs or houses.

Throbert McGee

Have lambskin condoms really gone the way of buggy whips? I assumed there would be a small perpetual market for them (namely, monogamous heterosexual couples who aren't worried about STDs and who for one reason or another prefer condoms to other birth-control methods), since despite their limitations, they supposedly offer more sensation to the male than latex condoms.

Opera Nut

So women die from safe legal abortions now?

A whole lot more of them died from unsafe, filthy, illegal backroom abortions when it wasn't legal. If you had money you could go to Europe and get a legal abortion. My dad said that when he was in high school in the 1920s, a lot of girls got backalley abortions, or tried the do it yourself coathanger/lye method, and died, and nobody said anything about it, just like it was normal. I have myself read old newspapers from that time with death notices of young women with a cryptic or nonexistent cause of death listed.

Besides, what about all the women and children who died in childbirth from a major uterine infection due to dirty doctors' hands (puerperal or childbed fever), uncontrolled bleeding to death, as in placental rupture, uterine rupture, and just plain big baby/small ass which would require a
C-section to get the mom and baby thru safely???

You can go to any New England cemetery and see the high numbers of women and children dying and men going thru three or four wives. Back in the bad old days before germ theory and C-sections in America, one out of three women died in childbirth or due to complications. And in a Catholic hospital, they are gonna save the baby instead of the mother if there is a choice, thereby leaving daddy with several motherless kids to raise. How wonderful. [sarcasm alert]

The good old days are a myth.

I'm still waiting for the anti-abortionists to offer to support a snot nosed brat for 22 years including four years of college and assorted lessons and enrichment. They see no contradiction between cutting off funding for prenatal care/ infant care/child nutrition and being anti abortion.

Like a cartoon I saw with a pregnant woman and a male politician with his hand on her stomach, and he was looking heavenward -
the caption was SACRED UNBORN LIFE.

Next panel: The woman is no longer pregnant, the child is a toddler standing there holding her hand. The politician gives them a really dirty look and points at them angrily.
Caption is:SNIVELING LITTLE WELFARE CHEAT

Loren Pechtel

Actually, they do. However, last I checked it was about 10x as likely that they would die from normal childbirth than from a first-trimester abortion. Since a pregnancy has to end somehow...

brighid

Any medical risk, including tooth removal can cause a person to die ... unfortunately. I have seen the same stats about 10x less likely to die from a 1st trimester abortion the normal childbirth. The risks increase as the pregnancy goes on whether it be for an abortion, a continued pregnancy, or finally a delivery.

Brighid