Debate: Birth control promotes promiscuity. Agree or Disagree

Hiya!!

Pharmacy school's quite fun at the moment. I'm feeling so happy about the coming future. By God's grace everything will be good :)

Today we had a Clinical Pharmacy class on family planning, etc, today and the lecturer decided she wanted us to have a sort of debate in the class. So she threw the topic to the class;

Birth control promotes promiscuity. Agree or disagree.

For some reason I sharply identified with the 'Agree' side. The reason being that I have always been of the opinion that if birth control didn't exist people will be less likely to engage in premarital/extra-marital affairs.
But by the end of the class I left with a different opinion.

Okay lemme give you part of the gist.

Two people spoke on the 'Agree' side. The first person argued that birth control is and should be for the well-being of the family and to help in planning a family, and not for any use outside that. The second person complained that the media didn't help matters. That most advertisements on contraceptives made sex look good and hence promote promiscuity instead of focusing the message on 'Abstinence is best'

After they spoke I knew we 'Agree' people didn't have a strong argument because I was suddenly not convinced again.

Two people on the 'Disagree' side also spoke. The first person said birth control in fact helps us, that it does not promote promiscuity. He said the media is polluted, that there is nothing that is not sold with sex as the underlying message. He jokingly added that he doesn't see any reason why a normal advertisement for a car or something like that should make use of bikini models as props. Everyone laughed and nodded and I remembered my post. So, he argued that if this is what the media does to us, then please let's propagate the use of birth control since we know that a lot of people have sex (sometimes due to a lot of pressure from media, peers etc), and hence prevent unwanted births.

We were still laughing at the thought of selling stuff with sex when the lecturer cited an example of an almost naked girl being used to advertise petrol at a filling station. In her words, "there is nothing sexy about petrol, in fact petrol smells horrible and filling stations are not nice places to hang out, so I don't see why anyone would sell petrol using a half naked woman"

I could not hold my laughter

The second 'Disagree' person made sense. She said, "birth control or no birth control, people will still be promiscuous. In the olden days they didn't have birth control and they were still promiscuous"...lol

A third person supported their motion and made even more sense, warranting an applause from the class.

At the end of the debate I was on both sides

'Agree', because, I still feel in some measure birth control aids promiscuous behaviour in some people. 'Disagree', because, when used in the right setting, it is of value to a family looking to plan their lives and should not be blamed for people being promiscuous.

The only issue for me was the fact that our lecturer kept hammering on the fact that we as Pharmacists have a role to provide birth control information and service to the community. Someone mentioned, "what about our personal beliefs on the topic?" and the lecturer said, "beliefs or no beliefs it is your responsibility to provide the service".

Now that's a tricky one for me especially since I battled with this a lot during my student-work experience in a community pharmacy.
But, the lecturer made it clearer. She said she wasn't saying we shouldn't have our personal beliefs, but that as Pharmacists we shouldn't be judgmental or condemn people (mostly unmarried people) that ask for any sort of birth control, but we should provide birth control tools for people if we find ourselves in a community pharmacy setting, because the whole idea is to help reduce the population and reduce mortality rates due to inability of the healthcare system to cater for increasing population needs. She said it is only when you finally develop a relationship with the person and you guys have a good rapport that you can start trying to make the person see things from your own point of view/ preach, if contrary to their own.

For me it made sense and I was kinda relieved, because that's one issue that bugs me ehn.. Still bugs me.
Just too complicated

Anyways let me throw it to you too;

Birth control promotes promiscuity. Agree or disagree.

Thanks for stopping by :)

Let's be honest

There are so many issues I think the youth of nowadays don't talk honestly about. But they are things that always bother me every now and again; issues concerning 'cheating on tests and exams', 'stealing from parents' and 'engaging in premarital sex'

On the issue of cheating on exams and tests; it's so rampant and sometimes people use euphemisms such as 'helping' to describe it (when two people are exchanging answers in the exam hall). Cheating as far as I'm concerned has become a scourge and is one of the things eating deep into the Nigerian educational system. People cheat at all stages-from primary school to undergrad and even masters level!! (I remember passing through a masters class while an exam was going on. The invigilator had his back turned to the class, while the two students in front were exchanging answers). Some parents encourage their children. We hear stories of parents buying 'expo' for their children for JAMB and SSCE exams. I remember in secondary school, a girl that was gisting with her mother who came to visit during visiting day. She was telling her mother how she was able to successfully cheat on a test and her mother was actually happy and they 'hi5ed'.

It's annoying that most people don't see anything wrong with it. Someone once said to justify his cheating that "Heaven helps those who helps themselves. God can't come down and help you pass your exams, so he gave you brain to think up ways to cheat"...SMH

In the university it's really bad and when one would have expected that most people in university should be grown up and confident in their abilities, what we see is sheer corruption going on and people cheating their way through school. The annoying part is when people actively cheat their way through school and end up with 2.1 and first class. It happens. There are people I know presently who are very good academically (at least that's what the results say), but every one knows part of their success lies in cheating. And then we wonder what kind of graduates we produce.

For me if something is wrong, it is wrong. No mincing words. I remember someone telling me I was a wicked person and I would never have friends in my class because I refuse to cheat during exam. And I was like duh! Since when did it matter to me what you felt or anyone else in this world for that matter. Abeg I have someone I would be accountable to one day. And besides I'm not looking to be a friend of the world.



Stealing from parents is another thing I find disturbing. I remember in secondary school when we were going on an excursion and we were asked to pay 20,000, one girl told her father it was 25,000. I was sad for her father and asked why she would ask for that amount. Her excuse was, her father has the money now, what's there if she lies about the real amount.

I remember one of our lecturers, who during one of his lectures digressed and told us we must really think our parents are stupid. He said he knows of students telling their parents they need money to buy funny things which they might term 'Osmosis' or 'pH'. It was hilarious and we all laughed but I knew in my mind he was not lying. Just recently when we started our different final year projects, I've overhead people talking about how they'd 'scope' and 'format' their parents and tell them they need 50k or 100k for their project, when they don't even need up to that. My own question is what is all this extra money used for. My conscience won't allow me do something like that and have these people never heard about the law of karma? The origin of everything is just greed.




Speaking out about how one feels about issues concerning premarital is most times greeted with insults from people and what not.

I remember some time ago when one of my friend's status on Facebook read:

        "Don't do it until you say 'I Do' "

and one of the comments under it read:

        "baba park well jor........lack of opportunity......lmao"

To say I was disgusted by that comment is an understatement.

My own opinion and based on my christian belief is premarital sex is wrong. No mincing words.

Even if a person does not believe it is wrong and decides to engage in premarital sex, the emotional, physical, medical and psychological effects of engaging in premarital sex, especially with multiple partners will not be nice on the person. It is always better to wait. I used to live in a world where I naively imagined in my mind that people of my age group, same faith tradition etc were not engaging in it. But when I went on IT in 400 level in a community pharmacy my eyes opened. The rate at which people were asking for 'Postinor 2' (emergency contraceptive) was higher than the rate at which they were asking for common paracetamol or vitamin C.

I'll never forget one lady, that came in complaining of vaginal itch and smell. In my mind I didn't want to judge her and imagine it was an STD, and as is proper in my profession, I told her to go for a lab test first so a vaginal swab could be taken etc, before anything can be done. She came back an hour later and told me she had gone to the lab and they asked her to come back in 2 days time for the result, but in the meantime she needed 2 Gold circle condoms and Postinor 2. My jaw dropped and I looked at her disbelievingly. I'm sure in her mind she suspected she was suffering from STD, but she still came back to ask for 'tools' so she could go get some more. I woulda expected her to go into a sober mode and wait for the test results.
Anyways who am I to judge..

This life is just the way it is.