With the statement below, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts joined other organizations such as the Boston College chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts in support of BC Students for Sexual Health and their work to provide condoms and information to their peers.
Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Stands with BC Students for Sexual Health
Says BC administration is irresponsible for restricting sexual health care access
BOSTON— Martha (Marty) Walz, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts (PPLM) President and Chief Executive Officer, issued the following statement today in support of Boston College Students for Sexual Health (BCSSH):
“As the President of the state’s leading sexual and reproductive health care provider and advocate, and the aunt of two Boston College students, I could not be more proud of BC Students for Sexual Health. Since 2009, these courageous student organizers have stepped up to meet the health care needs of their peers by providing condoms and sexual health information from their dorm rooms. I am extremely disappointed that Boston College administrators are now threatening to impose disciplinary action against these students. Universities, healthcare providers, public health advocates, and young people should be partnering together to keep our communities healthy.
“Birth control is basic health care, no matter where you work or go to school. Access to condoms and sexual health information is necessary for young people to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and unintended pregnancy. And with STD rates rising among people under age 25, empowering young women and men to make healthy decisions should be a top priority for all of us.
“BCSSH is part of a growing movement among young people to stand up in support of sexual and reproductive health, sex education, and access to preventive care. Planned Parenthood is proud of its alliance with BCSSH that dates back to its founding; the group is an essential member of our campus organizing program, which includes eight chapters across Massachusetts. We are helping to create the next generation of leaders and activists in support of affordable and accessible health care for women and men.
“Impeding students’ access to the tools and information they need to make smart, healthy decisions is irresponsible and short-sighted on the part of the Boston College administration.”
If you would like to show your support for BC Students for Sexual Health, add your name here: http://tinyurl.com/StandWithBCSSH.
There is really nothing more to it. Two of the three women I know who had abortions had them because they engaged in unprotected sex (in one case unwillingly), its ridiculous for any college campus to deny this access.
I recognize that BC is a Catholic institution and the Vatican currently has an outmoded understanding of contraception, but considering how few Catholics feel contraception is morally wrong and how many non-Catholics go to BC, its ridiculous not to have this available. I went to a Div III school and can still attest that the alcohol fueled culture of sports and frats definitely can cause date rape, and I am sure the problem is worse at a Div I school like BC. The pill, condoms and the morning after pill prevent abortions they do not cause them.
I don’t have the prevalence of actual numbers, but it seems that that is what happens now.
What’s not new is that it is the women who will pay for unwanted pregnancy, whether through abortion, the physical and psychological costs of pregnancy, the profound effect on a college career and career afterward, and/or the giving birth to a baby.
Neither the president of BC nor its head of Public Relations will pay any of these costs. They should stay out of it.
We didn’t call such an encounter a “hook-up”, but that’s what we did all the same.
The men in my crowd during that time (while I was in high school and college), including yours truly, took reasonable steps (like asking) to make sure our prospective partner was using contraception (the pill, IUD, diaphragm, whatever). While I guess some women lied to some men, that never happened to me. The women in my crowd all used contraceptives. None of us used condoms, neither men nor women enjoyed the experience as much. We all knew enough about STDs to know what symptoms to look out for, and we all knew where to go if bad stuff happened. My male friends and I all knew that “NO” means no, and if we didn’t want to use a condom and our prospective partner didn’t have birth control, we did whatever we both enjoyed that didn’t have unwanted reproductive consequences.
It was not a big deal.
All this took place in a much different, and in many ways better, cultural environment. My high school town (and several nearby) had a “free clinic” where women could get the pill and both men and women could get treatment for anything bad that happened. Few questions were asked and parents were explicitly never told (that was a large part of why the clinics existed). My college town (Pittsburgh) had a rich variety of similar resources. As I recall, my college had similar services available on-campus. In 1974, when I first moved to Boston, a free-clinic-on-wheels parked by the Harvard Square T station most nights (I forget its name now).
The sexual encounters that I had and knew of were always consensual, never coercive, often casual, and as far as I know did little or no physical or emotional harm to anybody.
I understand that HIV/AIDS changed everything. I was utterly unaware of whatever was happening in the gay/lesbian community then, so I can’t speak to that.
What I can and will say is that in the forty-odd years since then, I think the social changes around sexuality have gotten far worse. An unholy alliance between the religious right and radical left combined to escalate the public health crisis of HIV/AIDS into a full-bore moralistic attack on pretty much all sexual behavior. We filled the heads of generations of adolescents with gross misinformation about the risks of casual sex (such as the lie that oral sex is major vector of HIV transmission among heterosexuals who don’t use IV drugs). We refused to talk specifically about the practices that did contribute to HIV risk, so another large group of adolescents got the bizarre idea that receptive anal intercourse was safer than vaginal sex. Nobody bothered to point out that sex with a partner who doesn’t have HIV can’t cause an HIV infection. Nobody mentioned that STDs like Gonorrhea, Syphilis, and Chlamydia are (a) orders of magnitude more likely to catch than HIV/AIDS and (b) readily treatable if caught early.
Today, HPV is easily preventable with a vaccine that, in my opinion, every teen — male and female — should receive by age 14 or so. Genital Herpes remains a problem, and I continue to hope for a vaccine. HIV remains a huge public health problem — it is, however, still relatively hard to get for Americans who are outside the high-risk populations. The average sexually-active college student is far more likely to get, for example, Gonorrhea or Syphilis than HIV.
All this is to agree with your point, to agree that BC should stay out of it, and to explicitly observe that I think the moralistic knee-jerk opposition to casual sex that is now so pervasive does untold harm to the overwhelming majority of adolescents who — not surprisingly — have casual sex anyway.
Wouldn’t we all be better off if we helped our young people learn about how to enjoy their sexuality, be safe as they do so, and helped them grow into a maturity where sexuality is one aspect of their full, happy, and healthy identity?
I think that the college hook up culture is a huge problem and an area where the religious right and progressive feminists can get together to make a difference. I think the current culture compared to the one you grew up in devalues relationships and women a lot more. There is little liberating about it.
That said some of the worst incidents occur on Catholic campuses like Fordham, ND and BC. I think the administrations have a “boys will be boys” attitude that turns a blind eye to real problems like date rape while both blaming the victim and depriving her of resources for her own health. Even at more liberal places like my alma mater there is definitely a double standard in the hook up culture where men have the power and prestige from encounters (conquests) and the women who are adventurous get scorned. I am not an advocate of abstinence only by a long shot, but I do think forming relationships, co-habitating (which you still can’t so in campus housing on most places) and taking it from there is preferable to the hook up culture. At least making the hook up culture a more even and pro-woman environment can do a lot to mitigate the damage. Honestly lowering the drinking age would help, kids drink a lot less in bars than at frats.
Some of us even lived to tell about it:)
Besides it’s not like BC is in the middle of nowhere. If they can’t distribute contraception on school property then do it just outside of school property where BC has no jurisdiction.
While I only know of today’s adolescent culture second-hand through my children (one graduated in 2006, one in 2008, one will graduate in 2014, one in 2016, and the last in 2018), I hear similar things from them that you write of. I agree that today’s culture is far worse — I think that’s my point.
It seems to me that the things we have advocated (no casual sex, less availability of contraceptive services, less availability of gynecological services, misleading and moralistic secondary school sex education, etc) have the common attribute that they promote traditional (and exploitative) roles and values. I think we have been all too successful, rather than not successful enough, at imposing 1950s-era attitudes towards sex on our young people.
I think we have to start with the presumption, not that “boys will be boys”, but instead that “adolescents will be adolescents”. That means they will have sex. They will. Attempting to crowbar those desires into “committed relationships” primarily serves to reinforce misogynist attitudes. I think a better approach is to make sex education, health care, contraceptive services, and so on available to as many young men and women as possible, starting at about age 15 (maybe 13, maybe 16, but 18 is too late).
Let me offer an example of why I resist your suggestion of encouraging “forming relationships [and] co-habitating”. Those relationships are overwhelmingly more likely to be short and unstable, because the parties are so young. Two well-matched 18 year olds are likely to be totally at different at 20 — never mind 15 to 17. The effect of pushing kids into “committed” relationships is that when those relationships end (which they almost always do), the participants experience much of the pain of divorce. We are virtually ensuring that the young people who follow our advice end up carrying the scars of multiple divorces into their very first formally-acknowledged marriage.
I think our young people will end suffering far less emotional harm by the time they’re 25 if they save their “commitment” cherry until later, while learning about themselves and their partners by safely enjoying their sexuality in explicitly casual (yet safe) settings.
…that marriages or even committed relationships are automatically misongynistic? In my book a true relationship and misongyny are by definition mutually exclusive. Unless the partners are absolute equals they are not partners at all. It is true that people should wait to marry for reasons you cite. I believe statistically the earlier you marry the more likely you are to divorce, but I reject in the strongest possible terms “adolescents will be adolescents” (an for the record just as strongly “boys will be boys”.
We are talking about students who are 18-22 years old. Few of the “committed relationships” formed at that age are committed in the sense you mean. As I tried to express in my comment, men and women that age are in the midst of revolutionary and constant personal transformation. Efforts to impose long-term commitment inevitably turn into efforts to suppress or repress needed and healthy changes in both partners. The premise that early commitment is somehow healthier than earlier casual sex flies in the face of human experience (and statistics).
Men and women of 18 might believe they are “absolute equals” — until it comes to how clean the bathroom and kitchen must be and who does the cleaning, who pays attention to the car (especially if it’s shared), and in a great many cases who does the cooking. When you add a greatly elevated risk of unwanted pregnancy to this mix, most of those “absolute equals” are objectively not equal — the male will never experience first-hand the consequences of that pregnancy. There is no way that self-discipline and effort can change that biological asymmetry.
Regarding misogynistic attitudes, look again at the techniques society uses to “encourage” these “true relationships”. The primary effect of discouraging contraceptive use is unexpected and unwanted pregnancy. The same institution that discourages contraceptive use flatly prohibits abortion — and accompanies that prohibition with explicit judgements about the morality of those who choose to violate that prohibition. Until men can bear babies, that latter judgement is reserved for women.
I’m particularly curious about why you object so strongly to “adolescents will be adolescents”. Another fundamental biological fact is that men enter their period of peak sexual desire earlier than women. Both men and women of that age must deal with the consequences.
What is so objectionable to making the simple observation that 18-22 year old men and women want to have sex?
I absolutely agree with your first paragraph. College-age people should not assume they are jumping into permanent commitments. However your second paragraph strikes me as more cynical than my generation’s reality would suggest. Chores etc., really are more equally shared among the younger set; although I am personally a few years removed from that age at this point, that really is how younger folks operate these days. As for pregnancy of course the woman bears the physical burden, but the man must do all he can to support her and take care of the child. If folks don’t want children they can use contraception, or the ONLY absolutely fail-proof method – ABSTAIN! I’m not seeing the societal techniques you refer to that simultaneously encourage commitment and inequality unless you are specifically refering to Catholicism. Maybe that’s just not my world.
My perception of the current attitudes of college-age people is formed by my five children and their friends. I agree that there is lip-service to the equal sharing you describe. The practice I see in almost all couples sharing a home is that unless the woman does it, it doesn’t get done. Each of our perceptions is formed from anecdotal data, so I’m open to be persuaded by something more formal. I invite you to offer something more objective than your own view of “[your] generation’s reality”. I’m saying that I don’t see any evidence of young men cleaning any more bathrooms today than they were in 1969.
I get that you believe a man “must do” all he can to support her and take care of the child. What, besides personal belief and discipline, provides the coercion that connects “must” and “does”?
It is harder for women to obtain the pill or an IUD today than it was in the late sixties and early seventies. This is especially true for women under 18. If there are clinics where an 18 year old woman with no insurance can walk in and get either — free of charge for the appointment — I don’t know of them. As a High School senior in 1970, I accompanied my then 16-year-old girlfriend to the Rockville Free Clinic where she was seen by a GYN, given an exam, and given a prescription for the pill. The appointment was free, the first round of pills were free, neither of us had to show ID or evidence of insurance, and no parents were notified (that mattered to a sixteen year old Catholic girl attending a Catholic high school). I don’t believe that is possible today.
My sense is that our culture has pushed us to a place where, for most college students, “contraception” means condoms. I grant that condoms are easier to get now than in the 1950s, but not by much.
When you effectively promote celibacy, you reassert the precise argument that I suggest is failing miserably. When we ask college students to choose between abstinence and abortions, they will end up choosing abortions — not in their beliefs, but in their actions.
Finally, we are talking about an issue involving a Jesuit college (Boston College). It most certainly is explicitly Catholic.
…I am using anecdotes (and trusting what I hear) too, so yes I stand by that it seems there is more chore-sharing now than previously. It makes sense if you think about it; both partners are more likely to work outside the home so both likewise need to pitch in when they are home. I’ve heard plenty of talk of alternating nights to cook supper or adhering to the rule that whoever cooks, the other cleans. Working parents also alternate days to stay home with a sick child rather than always assuming it will be the mother. I guess we can’t prove each other’s experience right or wrong in this regard. When I talk about what I believe a man must do it was in the context of pushing back on the notion that because I support ultimately committed relationships, albeit later in life, I must also support an unequal partnership where nothing could be further from the truth. I try not to judge after the fact because I understand people make different choices and I have no desire to legislate morality. However, in case it weren’t already clear my attitude toward sex is actually quite conservative – wait definitely until you’re an adult and preferably until you are married. Therefore, especially with teenagers, I’m decidely unsympethetic to what to me comes across as whining that it may not be convenient to engage wherever, whenever, and with whomever without consequence. You’ve refered to “casual sex” which while I understand what it means and that some people do in my book that is an oxymoronic term. There is nothing casual about sex, especially if something goes wrong.
We’re talking about eighteen year olds in college, not folks who are “more likely to work outside the home”, “alternating nights”, and so on. We aren’t talking about “working parents”. We’re talking about kids who are a few months removed from living at home, and who frequently still return home for summers and breaks.
I gather from your other comments here that you remain celibate. Like celibate priests, I remind you that your view towards sexuality and its consequences is therefore speculative. When you describe “casual sex” as “oxymoronic”, your views are uninformed from any real-world first-hand experience. Frankly, you don’t and can’t have a clue about the emotional consequences of either committed or casual sex until you’ve experienced at least some of it yourself.
The overwhelming majority of young people make different choices than you. The literature is full of references like this, showing that upwards of 70% of nineteen year olds have had sex.
Perhaps you are willing to dismiss the experiences of seventy percent of the college-age population as “whining” — I am not.
…but I’m also perfectly capable of hearing and reading examples when something went wrong, an STD or an unplanned pregnancy or simply subsequent emotional regret, despite taking precautions. I know people to whom this applies. Besides 70% says to me that 30% have made the other choice so it IS possible. I know you were talking college age, but if anything they would be more enlightened, so unless for some reason you are arguing that college guys are more misongyst or patriarchal than those a few years older and married, which I would dispute, I think my assessment of a committed relationship not being such is valid.
Are yiou fucking kidding me? You bunch of spoiled little shits.
It’s like this.
B.C. is a club which anyone can apply to join. Those joining know what the club is about. In this case a Catholic College. Long strict rules about certain things.
Upon acceptance to the club some members complaint about the fairness of a rule that goes to the heart of a core belief of the club. This isn’t about making Tuesdays Taco Night in the dining hall. It’s fucking Catholic Doctrine you sons of bitches.
Lets force Jews to allow kids who can’t recite the Torah get bar mitzvahed?
Or how about forcing a Rugby Club to become a Soccer Club because three new members want it so.
Let me see these kids show some real balls and hand the condoms out in the Roxbury and Lawrence and Springfield where teenage pregnancy is a problem.
And why don’t you kids transfer or start your own goddamn college if you don’t like how a Catholic college is run.
In this case the little shits are handing out condoms on the campus.
Big Deal! Oh aren’t you so righteous, courageous, pioneering, groovy, and just all that.
Meanwhile these dinks can walk across the street and buy or shoplift them anytime. And B.C. chicks don’t get pregnant. The numbers aren’t there
But anyway the ignorant know-it-alls think the ACLU because they want to force a private institution to become their institution.
I want everyone to remember Skokie Illinois. The Nazi’s had a march through the predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
They were denied a permit because of the hateful nature of it.
The ACLU defended the NAZIs and the march went on.
Where’s the Globe defending the rights of B.C. to do this?
Two faced frauds.
I should help them with pamphlets for next year to pass out to the kids. I’ll offer my services at no cost. How about this:
“If you do it, do it raw. BC.”
The real fraud is the college.
Ernie, shhhhh, don’t tell anyone, but college kids fuck.
I can get Ave Maria University not allowing condoms and respect it, maybe even Notre Dame and CUA since they are still under direct Vatican control but Georgetown and BC are barely Catholic anymore. When you go through the tour and admissions at both schools (as I have) they take pains to stress they are ‘Jesuit not Catholic’ and that open inquiry is tolerated and significant numbers of non-Catholic students are admitted and encouraged to apply. If you want to truly make it a ‘Catholic club’ like the KofC than restrict it to Catholics or force the students and faculty to sign statements affirming Vatican doctrine like Ave Maria does. UND at least forces its faculty to do that, though I doubt it would force its football team to do so.
And again don’t act sanctimoniously on contraception while pretending that the ballplayers don’t get their pick of the liter and the admins turn a blind eye to their culture which encourages racking up ‘scores’ in their extra curricular activity as well. If you are going to have a ‘study hard play hard’ culture (which is in the prospectus I might add!) and encourage it than its common sense to allow condoms on campus. I also don’t think any of us are calling on BC to be forced to get contraception, I’m not, I just think its policy reeks of hypocrisy and double standards. I’ve worked with a UND football alum who thought it was ok to have multiple girlfriends at once so long as he ‘pulled out in time’-that attitude is more common than you think and its a menacing one.
I just don’t get BC. Its okay to name your public policy center after a vocally pro-choice priest like Fr. Drinan, its ok to keep sanctioned theologian Charles Curran on faculty, its ok to have a Theology school where the bulk of the faculty blast Humane Vitae, its ok to have an atheist Jewish baseball player like my buddy play centerfield for BC and ‘score’ multiple times off the field as well but then prevent the female students from making their own choices as well? Either be strictly Catholic, Catholic rebels, or secular, but trying to be all three is a ridiculous pretense that nobody is taking seriously.
… EB3 isn’t angry enough to force the issue… he’s using the issue to force his anger on us. At the intersection of Boston politics, stone sexism and creeping modernity you will find a seething cauldron of venomous spite calling itself EB3.
All that is just to say… don’t feed the anger troll. Please.
He calls himself a V2 catholic and is usually liberal on other issues, he is far more informed than DFW though I will admit he has been trollish as of late.
Anyway my point is BC is ridiculously hypocritical on this issue and its a double standard endangering the women on its campus. Thats just a fact.
not a religious one. Rights and freedoms.
BTW you guys are pathetic believing a religion will change core beliefs by arguing that B.C. students need free and convenient condoms?
Huh?
I will engage him just once more
I am not arguing that the state should force BC to issue contraception, I am saying what is pathetic is for the Jesuits at BC to have a very liberal theology department, very liberal priests, very liberal masses, very liberal LGBT policies, and yet be conservative on this one issue. An issue I might add, it regularly turns a blind eye to when it comes to the conduct of its athletes and the culture of sexual depravity any D1 college has around its athletic teams. For them to get all high and mighty on condoms is whats pretty pathetic. But they do have their right to be pathetic, thats not what I was arguing.
are adhering to the Catholicism I was raised in. Those actions are consistent with the New Testament, the teachings of Jesus and catholic doctrine.
That’s what Pope Francis’s washing of the poor’s feet last week was all about.
Help the most disadvantage.
Free condoms at an institution against the concept where there is not an unwanted pregnancy problem and individuals there have access to condoms and the means to pay for them is not a cause.
This is not analogous.
Its not just unwanted pregnancy its also to stop the spread of AIDS, HIV, and other STDs. And its a major problem on most college campuses, I would argue that statement is an assertion not backed by evidence.
And again if BC wants to by hypocritical thats fine, but if they already allow priests and theologians who are openly against Humane Vitae to preach and teach than I don’t see who they are fooling following the Vatican line on that one issue. Certainly not this Catholic. Not arguing against their right to be hypocrites just pointing out that they are.
A Bigot and a Xenophobe.
really mike, what the hell is up with you.
Talk about narrow minded and self-centerdd. It’s all about you and you controlling others to do what you want.
How about Christian Scientists/ Let’s force them to seek life saving medical treatment. Sick people suck. They are pains in the asses. Just like pregnancies. Hahah
you hater you
You hate irish Catholics, don’t you mike? Admit it. Why mike why?
A Troll Putz or a Putz Troll?
Don’t you know that many Irish Catholics are Gingers.
n/t
Xenophobic ARSE.
they’re vile vile people mike. I swear, If we elect as a gingah as our next mayor well, I swear, I’m gonna , I’m gonna,,,
well, you just wait.
You’re going to what?
i tell ya. You’ll see.
You on a rooftop, screaming, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!“
Please take it somewhere else, both of you.
Do you guys live in Waltham or something?
under a bridge by any chance?
.