The Maine Woman’s Christian Temperance Union acknowledges the fact that society has created a need to protect our children from the dangers associated with early sex. We understand that the Portland School Board is trying to do their part in preventing unwanted pregnancy and disease.

By making birth control available to adolescents, you may prevent some pregnancies, but you cannot prevent disease. The temperance union realizes that for several years, condoms have been available in the middle school. Did you know that according to Contraceptive Technology, 15 of 100 typical condom-using couples would experience pregnancy within the first year of use? The basic problem is that no matter how much safe sex education is taught, no matter how many bowls of free condoms are left in plain view, and no matter how much contraceptive marketing is propagated, there are a number of mechanical and human factors that simply cannot be controlled.

Children are mimics. Hollywood and the media are impressing upon our society that having sex is recreational. The temperance union believes that sex is a beautiful gift from God. With the impact that Hollywood and the mass media are impressing upon our children at earlier and earlier ages, educators and school officials should be working to counteract these potentially harmful influences, instead of facilitating adolescent sexual activity.

Children are sent to school for, basically, the three Rs – Reading, wRiting and aRrithmetic. Why is government taking over the roll of the official sex educator?

The Maine temperance union wants to help the Portland School Board and any other school board in Maine who would like our help. For 133 years, the union has made significant contributions to the quality of life in this nation. For example, it was the temperance union that convinced federal and state legislatures to enact into law that health classes and the study of nutrition for well-balanced diets be taught in public schools. The union founded the first kindergartens, day care centers and helped found the Parent Teacher Association. Through the initial efforts of the union, child and adult labor laws were enacted. Foster homes and orphanages, homes for the elderly, homes for abused children, homes for pregnant teenagers, and homes for prostitutes were opened across the country by the union. Many historians have noted that the union was the primary, most efficiently organized and prolific source of energy and accomplishments to ever fuel the Women’s Movement.

Today, the major thrust of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is to educate our nation’s youth on the harmful effects of alcohol, illegal drugs, tobacco and other threats to the health of the human body and the society in which we live. It is with the utmost concern and love that we urgently request you reconsider your decision to make prescription birth control and other contraceptives available to our middle school children – for, indeed, they are still children.

Submitted by Lani Kelly, of Windham, on behalf of the Maine Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.