Teach Your Children Well

I've recently joined a writer's online group. As a person who does not shun controversy, I find it alarming that my most provocative piece, judged strictly from the number of comments, was that of advice for my 12 year old niece (see "For Clarisa" dated September 7).
There was one overriding sentiment in these comments, that of replace "use protection" with "practice abstinence."
Let's take a look at the data.
With 12,000 participants in a federal study, abstinence pledgees did delay the first incidence of sexual intercourse by 18 months, had fewer sexual partners and married earlier.
However, more than half broke their pledge, and developed sexually transmitted diseases at about the same rate as adolescents who had not made abstinence pledges. One of the Yale research authors stated, "telling teenagers to 'just say no,' without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk, turns out to create greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases."
It occurs that pledgers are probably not more likely to have protection. It's like they PLANNED it.
When I consider that some parents set a standard of complete sexual repression at males' sexual peak development, I think about the analogy with Catholic dogma. "Girls in Catholic school uniforms are hot!" said a writer friend last week. Why, because we always say no?
What IS this dilemman we're promoting?
The half of the boys who break their promise, and the boys who never promised at all, will all be looking at my beautiful, voluptuous, charming young niece. Of COURSE I want her to say no. But what consequence will she suffer if she does not? Disease? Pregnancy?
Too high a price, I think.