I posted the following to "Oh Dear" in the thread entitled "Pro-choice or Pro-life? Debate which position seems to be most morally correct." I should have entitled this thread, "Together We CAN Make a Difference!" but in editing, was unable to see how to do it.

My purpose for this discussion is not to blame or accuse. I personally feel that people behave certain ways because they just don't know any other way.

It is my desire to change our society, stop the eternal bickering on whether a fetus is a baby or not, whether or not abortion should or should not be legal, but to change our ways of living so that the discussion is no longer a hot topic.

Sounds good to me. What has been proven to actually be effective in keeping the rate of abortion and pregnancy low is being honest with youth about sex and providing condoms and birth control for free.

Scripture will do nothing unfortunately.

It (scripture) does nothing for those who have no use for it, but will do everything for those who believe.

It won't keep them from getting pregnant

Yes, it will. They will realize their value, they'll gain self-respect and self-esteem that will help them stay pure until their wedding day.

bull

one doesn't have a lack of self-respect nor self-esteem to have sex

when people 'saved themselves' for marriage, they were getting married at 14 and died at 45.

there is no reason for people to (pfffft) remain 'pure' until they're 30 years old in 2007.

I've never seen more foolish idealism in my life.

Recently I've been reading "Father Loss" by Elyce Wakerman. This book is a must for every girl/woman who has lost her father through death, divorce or desertion.

A girl's self-esteem is developed by the relationship she has with her father in her early years. If something interrupts that development, she becomes like a ship on the open seas without a rudder or a captain without a compass.

If you are a girl/woman who lost your father between the tender ages of 1-5, while you were growing up, did you

1. feel you were missing something but unable to put your finger on it?

2. feel "different" than the other girls in your school whose parents were still together?

3. look at other girls and wonder "What do they have that I don't?"

4. feel the boys (in Junior High and High School) treated you differently (disrespectfully) than other girls?

It has been proven that girls who were raised without fathers have a much more difficult life than those whose fathers were consistently in their lives.

Girls raised without fathers either through divorce or desertion, are more flirtatious, (sometimes) tend to be tomboys (to get closer to boys) because they crave male attention, something absent in their lives. (Girls who lost their fathers through death and their mothers never remarried are not in this behavior group).

In her puberty years, she begins to look for the tender love she never had from her father. She wants affection, cuddling, and affirmation that she is feminine, pretty, and adorable wheras the boy thinks she wants what he wants. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The affirmation that she is feminine, pretty, and adorable should naturally come first from her father. If she doesn't receive it in the early years, she goes into the world pretty much unarmed...doesn't have the required affirmation of self needed to find or get what she wants from life. Actually, many aren't even aware of what they want. They only know HUNGER...for something they don't know. You know that feeling of being hungry and don't know what you're craving? so you eat this, then that, then you grab up something else, eat, eat, eat, until you're almost sick and you're still not satisfied. That's how it is with fatherless girls. They know something is missing, but they haven't a clue what it is.

They can know what's missing, though. They can know by educating themselves. As long as there are divorce, death, and desertion, there will be young girls who will be deprived of what God intended them to have.

If you are in this category, I urge you to go to Amazon.com and find this book. I promise, it will help immensely. Even if you are a Grandma, you will benefit from this book.

I think in general people realize their value when they are valued, give respect when they are respected, and gain self-esteem when they are loved. The more we can show we value, respect and love one another, the better off humanity will be.

There are alot of STDs out there. That alone is a reason to abstain, in my opinion.

This is true and the key word is "in general". Fatherless girls don't fall in this category because they lack the basics that come naturally to others.

I agree, but the girls we're talking about don't have enough self-love to not take that chance. Not trying to be obstinate, Chris, but we're not talking about "normal" on this page.

There's a saying that goes like this: If you've never known love, how would you know how or what to give?

We are able to give only what we know. We are taught by example. If we had poor parents, 9 times out of 10, we'll be poor parents. Even when we try to be different.

Who we label "poor parents" are most likely people who had poor parents. They simply mimic what they've seen.

When I got married, I vowed my marriage would be different than my mother and stepdad's. I didn't marry a drinker or an alcoholic, my husband and I never fought. I vowed I would be a different mother to my children than my mother was to me. Everything I managed to make different than my parents was superficial, but I still carried (unknown to me) baggage into my marriage, that eventually culminated in divorce. Most of it, I know now was because of insecurities I never overcame. I simply didn't know what was lacking, nor how to attain it. How can you attain that particular thing you're missing when you don't know what it is or that you're missing it?