Richard Allen

Only in a health care information-free world would someone think Mr. Collett's advice sound. The National Institute of Health (NIH) website lists the risk factors for cervical cancer: having sex at an early age, multiple sexual partners, sexual partners who have multiple partners or who participate in high-risk sexual activities, etc.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure web site reports use of birth control pills slightly increases the risk of breast cancer. The EHealth web site reports effectively using condoms may prevent some STDs, while it only reduces the risks of catching other STDs.

Translation: The federal government is downplaying the actual probabilities of catching an STD even while using a condom. Assume a condom protects you 97 percent of the time. Then, with repeated sexual relations with an infected partner, the probability of infection increases. The formula ‘1 – (Probability of Protection) to the power of the number of sexual encounters = the risk of infection' demonstrates that risk.

If a person has sexual relations with an infected partner 25 times, then 1 – (0.97) raised to the 25th power is the risk of infection. Probability of infection is 0.467 or 46.7 percent. NIH studied cancer in nuns compared with U.S. women in general, and found dramatically lower cervical cancer rates.

The Catholic Bishops are concerned about women's health urging males/females to refrain from sex outside of marriage, to wait for marriage before having sex, and for women to only have sex with their husband. The Catholic Bishops base their concern based not only on Bible teachings, but on sound science!

Oh, yeah, and with regard to abstinence – how many times have you been so angry you wanted to smack someone around? Did you do so, or did more intelligent reflection tell you that following through with your "natural impulses" might have some pretty unpleasant consequences for you – and you abstained?