A representative selection of 100 university youths statewide from the Sabah Catholic Group has taken a “No Pre-Marital Sex” pledge over the Sept 16 Malaysia Day weekend, promising to remain chaste until marriage.

NONE The message that they brought home was that campus students“have no business to indulge in pre-marital sex”, and that “a minute of sexual pleasure can mean a lifetime of agony”.

The pledge-taking followed an anti-baby dumping talk entitled, ‘Love, Sex and Marriage’ at the Sacred Heart Parish in Kota Kinabalu by Ligaya A Acosta, a visiting speaker from the Philippines.

Agosta is Executive Director of Asia-Oceania Region of Human Life International (HLI) Pro-Life Missionaries to the World, the regional chapter of a US based organisation.

“We live in a sex-crazed and sex-saturated environment. Sex is portrayed as an activity between a boy and a girl rather than a husband and wife,” she lamented, arguing that sex was “made” for procreation and for purposes of union.

She conceded that sex is beautiful but only as a privilege given to married people alone and not to boyfriends and girlfriends. From her observation, the bulk of sexual action and language today occurs between unmarried persons.

Teenagers, the HLI believes, indulged in pre-marital sex for seven reasons: the need for intimacy, need for sense of belonging, curiosity, rebellion, ensuring fidelity, a way to cope with stress and as confirmation of one’s masculinity/femininity.

The youths also went home with five tips on avoiding temptation to indulge in pre-marital sex during dating: dress modestly, avoid pornography, avoid poorly lit and dark places, don’t be alone in pairs, be prayerful to avoid falling into a trap.

‘Abstinence and faithfulness’

The girls in particular heard this message from Agosta: “If your boyfriend asks you to go to bed with him as proof of his (or your) love, just look him in the eye and say ‘You are a liar!’”

NONE She advises that girls caught in this situation break off immediately with their boyfriends “because he doesn’t love you”. “‘Love equals sex’ is a false notion. It is lust, not true love,” cautioned Agosta. Your boyfriend will respect you and won’t exploit you if he truly loves you.”

No one should force another to do what he or she doesn’t want to do, she added.

A true man, continued Agosta, will preserve his woman for marriage since true love is respect, never putting another at risk. The majority of boys leave their girlfriends when they become pregnant, she added. “Take care of your body. Know where you are going and you won’t get lost.”

She reiterated that immorality is a sin against one’s own body.

HLI emphases abstinence before marriage and on remaining faithful after. They form the heart of the HLI’s take on sex and youth as “many young people do not embrace the values of chastity, self-control and responsibility”.

Sexuality, in short, entails responsibility and responsible sexuality is abstinence to help prevent unwanted pregnancies and to prevent abortion. “It also means protecting yourself against sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS,” said Agosta. “Be responsible for what you are, what you have and for what you do. Beware of the consequences of your action. Abstinence needs your firm decision.”

Agosta explained at length the advantages of pre-marital abstinence.

She explains that apart from freedom from unwanted pregnancy, from entertaining thoughts about abortion, from using contraceptives, from guilt, depression, fears, freedom to be in control of your tomorrow; freedom to enjoy oneself as a teenager, freedom to establish great trust in marriage, freedom to respect yourself and others, and freedom to use your energy to accomplish your life.

She also stresses the importance, in the absence of abstinence, of marrying too soon i.e. before one is ready.

‘Abortion is murder’

She touts abstinence as the best form of contraception and argues against safe sex that “there’s no such thing as safe sex and safe abortion”.

“Save yourself from emotional heartaches as a result of being left by your boyfriends, or a ruined relationship, or finding out that your boyfriend has AIDS,” she told the girls in particular. “AIDS is a slow death sentence.”

NONE She disclosed that women under 18 run the increased risk of breast cancer by 150 percent in the case of induced abortion, that she calls “the worst form of murder because you are killing a defenceless human being”.

HLI maintains that the theory that abortion is safe and not an act of killing because “the baby is not formed yet” as untrue because human beings are genetically complete from the moment of conception, when the male sperm and the female egg fusing into one cell, and is concerned with the apparently growing practice of killing unborn babies.

They note more than 60 documented “horrible side effects” of contraceptives that include infertility, hypertension, risk of stroke or heart attack, osteoporosis, cancers of the breast and reproductive organ, birth defects, gall bladder disease, liver tumours, mood disorders, depression, reduction of libido (the sex drive) and blurring of vision leading to blindness.

condoms HLI also rejects the use of condoms, that are advocated by proponents of reproductive health, as they maintain that condoms are no guarantee against HIV/AIDS infection and sexually-transmitted diseases (STD) despite any amount of education on its usage.

The Roman Catholic Church, stressed Agosta, frowned on the use of condoms and wants to discourage the tendency to blame the Church just because “it does not allow the use of condoms”.

Five to seven cases of pregnant teens show up at the Seri Murni Crisis Centre (SMCC) alone in Sabah every month, according to its director sister Patricia Barasik. The SMCC, set up in 1989 by the Good Shepherd Welfare Centre in Kuala Lumpur, has set up 15 beds in Kota Kinabalu and another 10 beds in Sandakan since May this year.