News

NEW YORK, January 8, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Aimed at urban teens, the “jimmie hatz” condom (“jimmie hat” is a hip-hop slang word for condom) is slated to hit store shelves by February.  The producers are targeting the “hip-hop” culture, considered to be made up primarily of minority groups, “hardest hit with HIV and AIDS.”  The producer of the condom is Common Ground USA. 

The CEO, Harry Terrell, told FOX news that “Basically, what we’ve tried to do here is make it the cool thing to do, the ‘in’ thing to do, to protect yourself.”  Common Ground is claiming to promote “safe sex” among these minority groups, as a means to reduce their sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy rates.

Although FOX reports a CDC claim that teen pregnancy rates dropped in the 1990’s because of increased sex education promoting condom use, according to the Physicians Resource Council, the drop in teen birth rates during the 1990s was due not to increased contraceptive use among teens, but to sexual abstinence (as reported by Cheryl Wetzstein, Drop in Teen Birthrates Attributed to Abstinence, in The Washington Times, February 11, 1999.) 

As reported in yesterday’s LifeSiteNews.com, commenting on the “massive” increase in sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies among adolescents in the UK, Dr. Trevor Stammers, a professor in general practice and commentator on sexual health, wrote in the British Medical Journal:  “Contraception as the cornerstone of sexual health promotion for adolescents has manifestly failed. In almost 15 years of general practice I have never seen a single case of unplanned pregnancy resulting from ignorance about or unavailability of contraception. He cites studies indicating that “up to 80% of unplanned pregnancies result from failed contraception” and “data from 1975-91 show a positive correlation between increasing rates of use of condoms at first intercourse and higher rates of teenage conceptions.” He warns that “oral contraceptives, while providing the greatest protection from unplanned pregnancy, offer no protection against sexually transmitted diseases.” 

December 3, 2003 LifeSiteNews.com coverage shows scientific evidence that condoms do not offer sure protection against the AIDS virus. Many researchers and sociologists have argued that condoms give users a false sense of security, increasing their risky behaviour and their susceptibility to the disease.

A study published in The Lancet in January 2000 showed that a “vigorous condom-promotion policy could increase rather than decrease unprotected sexual exposure if it has the unintended effect of encouraging greater sexual activity.” The authors warned “increased condom use will increase the number of transmissions that result from condom failure” and could negatively affect “decisions of individuals to switch from inherently safer strategies of partner selection or fewer partners to the riskier strategy of developing or maintaining higher rates of partner change plus reliance on condoms.”  

Read LifeSiteNews.com article: Doctors Without Borders Charges Vatican's Anti-Condom Stand Helps Spread of AIDS

Read the FOX news condom story.