Letter: Planned Parenthood promotes safe sex for National Condom Week

Dear editor

If your sweetheart makes your knees go weak, imagine what he or she could do with your immune system.

This Valentine's Day will be sweetest if you remember to love carefully. That's the idea behind the 24th annual celebration of National Condom Week. After abstinence, condoms offer the best protection against a host of sexually transmitted infections that can weaken your immune system temporarily or permanently.

Estimates show that one in five Americans has a sexually transmitted infection, and two-thirds of all STIs occur among teen-agers and college-aged adults. Some sexually transmitted infections are curable, but many are not. They can lead to cancer, sterility and death. Why take a chance? Why not use a condom? Because our human sex drives kick in long before college beckons, abstinence until marriage is not a realistic goal for many students.

But condom use should be. It's not easy to talk with loved ones about STIs and condoms, but it's harder to live with a disease that might have been prevented. Condoms save lives. For more information about condoms, visit www.plannedparenthood.org or the unconventional www.ripnroll.com.

Maureen Dobie
Planned Parenthood of Greater Indiana, Inc.

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