Keeping Their Babies

LIFENEWS.COM, Aug. 11 — A study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence reported that adolescent girls who have an abortion are far more likely to engage in self-destructive and other negative behaviors than those who keep their babies.

According to the study, undertaken by Dr. Priscilla Coleman, a research psychologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, teenage girls who have an abortion are five times likelier to seek help for psychological and emotional problems than those who keep their babies.

The study also found that teenagers who have abortions are three times more likely to report subsequent trouble sleeping and nine times more likely to report subsequent drug use.

Ab-Ed Works

NATIONAL POST (CANADA), Aug. 15 — Delegates at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto were told Aug. 14 about a recent U.S. study that found abstinence-only programs reduce promiscuity among young teens.

The study of 662 African-American Grade 6 and 7 students from inner-city middle schools in Philadelphia found that students who were taught an abstinence-only approach to relationships were less likely to have lost their virginity two years later than those taught a so-called “safer-sex” approach that emphasizes condom use without mentioning abstinence.

John Jemmott of the University of Pennsylvania, the study’s lead author, said: “We caused them to have more positive attitudes toward abstinence and the negative consequences of engaging in sexual activity at an early age, including [being] less likely to achieve one’s career goals.”

Pro-Life Shrine

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 6 — The birthplace of suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony in Adams, Mass., has been purchased by Carol Crossed, president of Democrats for Life of America.

Crossed bought the two-story home where the famous suffragette leader was born in 1820 for $164,500 at an Aug. 5 auction. She said a member of Feminists for Life of America will live in the house, which Crossed hopes to open to the public, Associated Press reported.

Like many other early American feminists, Anthony was a vigorous opponent of abortion, which she saw as a consequence of the oppression of women.