What about Abstinence? It is Free and Freeing
by Christy Hinkson 
Christy is an author and a mother of ten. She recently released her new book Home Remedies for a Nation at Risk: What American Leaders could learn from American Families. Also, click here to view Christy’s blog Stand for the Truth.
With the contraception debate brewing and boiling over, I have to ask: What about Abstinence? Why does anyone have to pay for birth control at all? Why do people laugh and think it is impossible to keep sexual relations within the bonds of marriage. What about all the people in the world who manage to control themselves and refrain from sex until they are married. There are millions of people all over the world who do this and have lived to tell about it. I also believe that those who abstain before marriage are in a better position to speak about “women’s health” than those who are having sex with multiple partners and using birth control, which has historically caused several women’s health issues.
I practiced abstinence and so did my husband. Our children and their spouses have also abstained until they married. I attended a prestigious private University where people were expected to live by an honor code and if they had sex outside of marriage while they were students they faced being dismissed as students from the university. What a great opportunity to go to school where the focus was actually on academics.
Choosing to be “morally clean” was one of the best decisions that I have ever made. Here are some of the stresses in life that I now do not have to worry about now because I was not prematurely sexually active:
1. I don’t have to worry that I will get a sexually transmitted disease.
2. I don’t have to worry that I will be as tempted to succumb to breaking this law as an adult. If I can survive the raging hormone time of youth, I am well on my way to living a pure life.
3. I don’t have to worry that I will have an unwanted pregnancy outside the bonds of marriage.
4. I don’t have to worry that anyone will ask me to consider having an abortion or giving a child up for adoption.
5. I don’t have to worry that there will be a child somewhere that I gave birth to and have not been able to raise.
6. I don’t have to worry that I have near as high of a chance of developing cervical cancer that is significantly linked to having multiple sex partners.
7. I don’t have to worry that my husband married me because he “had to.”
8. I don’t have to worry that I will run into old partners and be embarrassed.
9. I don’t have to worry that I will ever think about other partners that I was immoral with.
10. I don’t have to worry that God will be disappointed with my choices.
Practicing abstinence is not only free, but it is freeing. It may cause some people a little stress to practice abstinence but look at all the stress you are able to live without later.