Science in support of abstinence

By way of reminder, my position in (and reason for creating) this blog is that science and religion should have an easier alliance, and that the most critical connection between the two is the pursuit of truth.

People of faith are frequently characterized in popular media as being indifferent or even hostile to scientific truths - as if they are inclined to believe things despite their being able to be disproven. As I have mentioned previously, this is not faith, but superstition.

And yet, in my observation, it is often people who purport not to subscribe to any particular religious faith (or, indeed, to have none whatsoever), and who also claim to worship only science, who have the greatest disregard for truth. As in scientifically demonstrable truth.

As I have argued here before (and will again), nowhere is that clearer than in matters of sexuality and popular culture. Abortion is perhaps the most extreme example. A human baby in utero is referred to - even in medical literature! - as a "product of conception" or "uterine contents." In no other context that I can think of is a human being treated like an inanimate object. Even when dead. (Can you imagine a funeral director asking the deceased's grieving family what burial outfit they would like to place on the "coffin's contents"?)

But many issues of sexuality as exalted by our culture are deceptions. And (as is so often the case), science is our ally here.

One could certainly derive the desirability of abstinence until marriage and monogamous fidelity thereafter from looking at medical risks associated with multiple sexual partners. The list of sexually transmitted diseases alone should be enough to prove the point that promiscuity is antithetical to human health. Syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, the 60-plus strains of human papilloma virus (some strains of which manifest as genital warts, and at least two of which are linked to cervical cancer). And then of course, there is HIV/AIDS. In that case, promiscuity is death. Lovely stuff.

Those who advocate the sexually libertine lifestyles manage rarely to discuss this, except in conjunction with the discussion of teaching children to use a condom, or demanding government funding (read: more money from all of us) to find cures for things we wouldn't have in the first place if we weren't sleeping around.

Over 20 years ago, my mother related to me a conversation she had with a pathologist at a clinic in our hometown. He told her that he was seeing shocking numbers of cellular abnormalities in the pap smears of college-aged young women. He said that they had already had multiple partners by the time they were in their 20's, and that this was already causing problems with the cellular development in their cervixes. "The human female body is not made to have large numbers of sexual partners," he asserted. "The body begins to develop antibodies and reject sperm. Many of these young women are going to find it difficult if not impossible to get pregnant. We are going to see an epidemic of infertility in the next ten to fifteen years," he said.

Certainly, there are news articles all the time now about the rise in infertility. Some is no doubt attributable to women waiting until later in life to try to get pregnant. But how much? Is there a correlation between promiscuity and infertility? Is anyone even talking about it?

In this vein, there is an excellent article in the Spring 2004 issue of the Human Life Review. In his article, "The Supreme Court and the Assault on Marriage," Donald DeMarco (Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at St. Jerome's University, Waterloo, Ontario) uses immunology in support of his argument that marriage (and sex) is meant to be between one man and one woman, and that the expression "the two shall become one flesh" is not merely a theological statement, but also a biological expression of a scientific truth. The article is available online, but I want to excerpt a passage from his article here:

The contributions of immunology on the nature of two-in-one-flesh warrants further elaboration. Our immune system, certainly one of the great marvels of nature, equips us with 100 billion (100,000,000,000) immunological receptors. Each of these tiny receptors has the uncanny ability to distinguish the self from the non-self. Consequently, they are able to immunize or protect our bodies against the invasion of foreign substances that could be harmful to us.

Marvelous as nature is, it is never extremist. From a purely immunological point of view (from the standpoint of an all-out defensive strategy), a woman's body would reject the oncoming sperm, recognizing it as a foreign substance. But this is precisely the point at which nature, we might say, becomes wise. If our immune system regards sperm as a potential enemy, then fertilization would never take place, and the human race would have come to an early demise with the passing of Adam and Eve.

But something extraordinary occurs, which makes fertilization and the continuation of the human race possible. Traveling alongside the sperm in the male's seminal fluid is a mild immunosuppressant. Immunologists refer to it as consisting of "immunoregulatory macromolecules." This immunosuppressant is a chemical signal to the woman's body that allows it to recognize the sperm not as a non-self, but as part of its self. It makes possible, despite the immune system's usual preoccupation with building an airtight defence system, a "two-in-one-flesh" intimacy.

Isn't it plausible that a woman's receipt of immunosuppressant molecules from 5, 10, 20, 50 men would affect her immune system's ability to distinguish "self" from "non-self"? Isn't it possible that years of sexual activity with many sexual partners could render a woman either immunologically compromised, or else incapable of receiving a man's sperm once she decides she actually wants to conceive?

Yes, this is dense and complex stuff. It is difficult to understand. But it is the truth. And I don't hear about anyone adding this to the public school's "health" curriculum.