Family Planning is conducting a campaign to have the condom accepted as a “Kiwi rubber essential.” “The focus of the campaign is designed to get New Zealanders talking about condoms and safer sex.”

It is commendable that Family Planning is seeking to reduce New Zealand’s high teenage pregnancy and STI rate. It is disappointing that the Association continues to promote as the solution a failed immoral campaign of “safer sex” with condoms which promotes promiscuity, fornication, more teenage pregnancies and STIs. Condoms encourage teenage males to become predators, mistaking lust for love.

Our sexuality is a gift of our Creator; He invites us to co-operate with Him within the institution of a loving marriage, procreation and the loving lifelong union of husband and wife. This is God’s plan for our happiness.

• Family Planning promotes the myth that condoms are the best protection against unplanned pregnancies, STIs including HIV, they are not. Chastity is the best protection.

• The Social Science Medicine [vol] 36, no 12, 1993 says “condoms are possibly only 85% effective for preventing pregnancy and 69% effective for reducing the risk of HIV infection.

• A United States Department of Health Task Force says “There is no clinical data supporting the value of condoms in preventing the spread of a range of diseases including Syphilis, Herpes Hepatitis B and HIV.” Condoms are also ineffective in preventing the spread of Chlamydia, which is spread by skin contact.

• Family Planning has a policy to support abortion as a backup for failed contraceptives. The Association accepts the sacrifice of the lives of innocent and defenceless unborn children as a price for sexual freedom. The Abortion Supervisory Committee in its 2009 report to Parliament advised that 4,898 women who had an abortion in 2008 were using condoms at the time of conception of the child they sought to abort. There have been more than 371,000 abortions reported since the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act was passed in 1977. More than 103,000 of these abortions were on women who experienced a condom failure at the time of conception. This is a price for the failed “safer sex “campaign of Family Planning supported and funded by the government that Right to Life believes is totally unacceptable to the citizens of New Zealand. In

the interest of protecting the lives of our unborn children and the health and welfare of our teenagers, we urge Family Planning to terminate its failed campaign of “safer sex” with condoms and to promote chastity before marriage.

Ken Orr

Spokesperson

Right to Life New Zealand Inc.