Condom Labels and Left-Wing Lies

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Condom Labels and Left-Wing Lies

Politics gets in the way of medical accuracy

By Linda Klepachi, Focus on the Family, November 16, 2005

As I opened my e-mail this morning, I found an alert from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood. I shouldn't have been surprised as I read the loaded headline, "FDA Proposes New Condom Labeling Guidelines: New Rules Could Decrease Condom Use, Put Lives at Risk," but the first line of the article jolted me to read on.

"In response to political pressure from social conservatives, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed changes to the existing labels for male condoms to include irrelevant and extraneous information that will only confuse condom users and may even discourage them from using condoms altogether," it read.

Lately, Guttmacher, Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) have been on a medical-accuracy witch hunt. So who was the "conservative" who initially called for this change in condom labeling? What is "medically accurate" when it comes to the proposed revision? And how many folks are using condoms, anyway? Liberal groups that want to keep the truth from the American public should pay special attention.

On Dec. 21, 2000, it was President Clinton who signed Public Law 106-554. It required the FDA to rewrite condom labels to ensure medical accuracy concerning how well they protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and pregnancy. As I recall, Clinton was not a social conservative.

So back off, Guttmacher. Conservatives did not sign this bill into law.

Since it was signed into law, it has taken five years and multiple requests, hearings and demands from legislators to move the FDA to comply. How many tax dollars have been wasted in forcing the agency that is charged with protecting the public from dangerous drugs and devices to simply follow the law? It boggles the mind to ponder the economics.

But compliance is finally in process. And it came about because legislators demanded our children and adults be protected from diseases that can affect them for the rest of their lives -- in particular human papillomavirus (HPV).

What are those right-wing social conservatives thinking? How dare they want to protect our children and youth from a virus that kills as many women in the U.S. each year as HIV! How dare they want medically accurate labels to protect Americans of all ages!

Here's the truth that will save people's lives: Two decades of research have shown that condoms do not protect against the transmission of HPV. That's the medically accurate information that needs to be shared.

And what about the claim that accurate information will only confuse condom users and may even discourage them from using condoms altogether? The facts show that after 40 years of comprehensive sex education in this country, we still have only 13-50 percent of female adolescents using condoms, compared to 45 percent of males.

Wake up, liberals. Current brain research shows adolescents are not adults. They do not think through the consequences of their behaviors, and that makes using condoms consistently very challenging. Even when researching adults who have complete brain development, and who are married with one of them being HIV positive, less than half of the couples use condoms consistently and correctly. So how are medically accurate condom labels going to lower the usage rate? It's already been low for many years.

But that's really not the point. The point is that people worldwide deserve the truth about the lack of effectiveness of condoms for protection from sexually transmitted diseases.

What agenda is Guttmacher hiding? Let's get the truth, including medically accurate information about condoms, to the American public. Let them decide whether a piece of latex is enough protection from a potentially deadly virus. And let's teach parents the truth, so they can decide the content of sex education for their children. Guttmacher and those who are like-minded can try to beat the odds all they want, but we social conservatives will stand on the truth and choose health and life.

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