Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free

by Linda Kay Klein

Studies have found that abstinence pledgers are less likely to use protection against sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy when having sex than their nonpledging peers. To be sure, the lack of accurate information young people receive in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs is likely at least partly to blame for this. After all, over 80 percent of the abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula reviewed by a 2004 House Committee on Government Reform minority staff report included “false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.”4 But I believe there is something deeper going on as well. Prophylactics are demonized in religious purity culture. A condom, for example, isn’t just a piece of rubber in a plastic sleeve; it is an instrument of sin, which can make shopping for protection feel like plotting your immorality.