Planned Parenthood, church team up on sex ed for teens

VIRGINIA BEACH

At New Light Full Gospel Baptist Church, congregants' benchmark on most topics is "the Word," meaning the Bible.

But on a recent night, more than 50 New Light adults and teens opened up to words from an additional source - Planned Parenthood, on stopping teen pregnancy.

Among many faith-based groups, few organizations are less popular than Planned Parenthood, a provider of women's health services, sex education and abortions.

Yet on this night, teen pregnancy was something Planned Parenthood speaker Margie Rashti and New Light members all agreed was troubling and preventable.

"We come together as a team, working to try to pass down wisdom to the young ladies and young men who are part of this pandemic we call teen pregnancy," Elder Frankie Fells said in his opening prayer.

New Light is among about a half-dozen local churches where Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia has provided health information, said Erin Zabel, the group's spokesperson.

However, that doesn't mean those churches see eye-to-eye with Planned Parenthood on everything.

"I'm not advocating for Planned Parenthood one way or the other," said Robin Patrick, New Light's Youth Enrichment Program leader. "We're not advocating any one procedure; we're not advocating birth control."

But she said information from Planned Parenthood could help New Light families worried about teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

"I want people to understand what is out there in the community, what options they have " Patrick said. "I want them to have informed choices."

Zabel said church invitations to the local Planned Parenthood ticked up just in the last year. She is also trying to form a clergy board that would collaborate with and advise Planned Parenthood.

There are already 40 to 50 clergy boards elsewhere in the country working with Planned Parenthood chapters, said Tom Davis, who formerly led the national clergy advisory board advising the organization.

Davis said that some of Planned Parenthood's strongest supporters belong to faith-based groups, including mainline Protestant and Jewish denominations.

He also acknowledged there is strong opposition from other faith-based groups, including Catholics and Southern Baptists.

In Virginia, the opponents include the Virginia Catholic Conference and the Family Foundation, which often reflects evangelical Christian viewpoints.

Jeff Caruso, the Catholic group's executive director, said Planned Parenthood collided with Catholic teachings by providing abortions and contraceptives.

He criticized Planned Parenthood for supporting abstinence as just one way of avoiding teen pregnancies.

"When you talk about abstinence on the one hand and then spend a lot of time talking about contraceptives, that undermines the positive message on abstinence," he said.

Victoria Cobb, the Family Foundation's president, said in a news release last year that Planned Parenthood wanted to end sexual abstinence education in schools and that abortion was its " No. 1 goal."

Cobb stated that Planned Parenthood's sex education program, "we believe, results in more kids engaging in risky behaviors, more sexually transmitted diseases among our teenagers, more teenage pregnancy and yes, more abortions - from which they profit."

At the New Light evening dubbed "Teen Pregnancy: Dreams Deferred," about 40 adults and 15 teens listened to Rashti, an unpaid Planned Parenthood volunteer from Norfolk.

Her goal for the evening, she said, was to talk about talking about sex.

"Teens really want this information from their parents. Parents want to give it. But it's really scary - they're afraid what they say may be misinterpreted," Rashti said.

Prompting, questioning, sharing, Rashti drew adults and youth into the ticklish discussion.

To parents, she asked, "If you could say one thing to kids on sex, what would it be?"

"Wait!" someone said.

"I like that, wait," Rashti said. "The longer you wait and the more knowledge you have, the safer you're going to be."

One teen said he'd been unsure how to respond when urged by a schoolmate to arbitrarily "do" a girl - that is, have sex. "How do you say 'no' in the right way?" he said.

A girl said she didn't know what to say to a friend who was sexually active even after an abortion. Rashti said the friend should see a school counselor.

Throughout the evening, Rashti never mentioned abortion and made only passing reference to condoms.

But she made clear there are a variety of options for potentially sexually active people.

"The big controversy is, we don't do abstinence only - we do abstinence, and...," she said of Planned Parenthood's message. "We promote abstinence. But we also recognize you need the information to protect yourself.

"We also know that having the information does not make you have more sex - actually, the opposite," Rashti added. She said teens postpone sex on their own when they realize the emotional demands of sexual intimacy.

She said families and even churches should provide places or programs where sharing concerns around sex would be comfortable for youth and parents. "We need that social, religious and emotional help to give our teenagers the information that will protect them," Rashti said.

Afterward, 16-year-old Demetrus Leslie said he felt encouraged to talk about sex with his parents. "It was very educating, with a lot of stuff I didn't know," he said.

A sampling of teens and adults yielded no one critical of what Rashti shared - or the propriety of talking about sex, condoms, masturbation and pregnancy in a church.

"Yes, it is fit talk, it should be fit talk, because you're trying to save a generation," said Bernina Young, who came with her 15-year-old son. "Even in the Word it tells us about saving the next generation."

Fells, a father and grandfather, also praised Rashti's talk.

"I think this is what these kids needs to hear; it's exactly what they need to hear," he said. "It's better to talk about it in the house of God than to have them talk about it with somebody on the street."

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com