The People Fight Back

There's an ad campaign that's been running in the city buses, promoting abstinence-only education. Actually abstinence-only is a generous way to describe it. It's essentially anti-birth control. It features pictures of troubled-looking teenagers with headlines like "Give Me A Chance...Not A Condom" and "Just Because You Did, Doesn't Mean I Will" (referring to unprotected sex). The text under the headlines says stuff like "Mom, Dad. I know you think I'm going to make mistakes. But I need you to believe in me. I want to do the right thing. I just need your encouragement to do it...Don't give me condoms, give me your support."

From day one this campaign irritated me - because it purports to speak for adolescents, but actually it's backed by some pro-life group; because it's clear to me that if you want to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies you should offer teenagers more access to protection, not less; because it suggests that parents who are responsible enough to make sure their teens have birth control available to them are "not trusting" or "not believing in" their kids. Please. Every time I see one of those ads, with its smarmy assumptions about teens and sex and parenting, I get annoyed.

This is why I am so happy to see that people have started scrawling retorts on the posters in magic marker. On one poster, the headline was altered to read "Give Me A Chance...AND A Condom." On another, under "Don't Give Up On Me," someone wrote sarcastically "Make Me Have A Baby!" On another, someone crossed out all the text and wrote, "Condoms Protect Against HIV and Pregnancy." I felt like cheering each time I saw one.

To be fair, I suppose the group that sponsors these ads believes that if you don't offer teens condoms, they won't have sex. So they are interested in stopping teen sex, not in making teens have unsafe sex. But that's so naive. I can't help but think the sponsors have seriously skewed perceptions about teen life and priorities, and are more interested in what they wish was true, than in what really is. And their misperceptions have the power to hurt people, if anyone takes them seriously.

I'm still scared to do any magic marker work myself - partly I keep forgetting to bring a marker, partly it's because the bus is always jammed and I feel weird about standing up to scrawl on a poster while everyone watches. Technically it is vandalism, and I guess you could get in trouble. Anyway, that just makes me that more grateful to people who take the risk to speak out against stupid propaganda.