Sexuality is part of everyday life.

        What are you doing to educate yourself? 

                  You may not be as safe as you think.

The truth is that sex outside of marriage has serious risks besides pregnancy...

• 1 out of 4 sexually active teenagers will get a sexually transmitted disease (STD) this year.¹
• In a single act of unprotected sex with an infected partner, a teenage woman has a 1% chance of acquiring HIV, a 30% chance of getting genital herpes, and a 50% chance of contracting gonorrhea.²
• You have only a 50% chance of being protected from an STD when you use a condom.³
• Each year, more than 15 million Americans get infected from oral sex and the majority are under 25 years old.⁴
• Your partner may not know that he/she has an STD... 80% of those infected do not know their condition.⁵

So your partner says that he doesn't have an STD. Should you believe him? How do you know he's telling the truth?  How can you be sure?

How do you know that a condom will keep you safe? Does a condom mean SAFE sex or does a condom just make sex safe...er? The Centers for Disease Control found condoms only partially effective. Is it worth the risk?

What are the risks? Getting an STD can mean embarrassment, infertility, cancer, liver damage, blindness, and even death. But STDs are treatable right? They may be treatable but not all are curable. What if you don't have any symptoms so you don't get tested... the damage may occur without you even knowing it.

What about the emotional risks? Many times young women don't even enjoy the sexual encounter, but agree to it because they want to be "close" and "feel loved". Men can easily push sex as a means of "showing" their love. She doesn't realize that she deserves the best sex ever and studies have shown that it exists inside of a relationship where a man and a woman have made a commitment in marriage.

When you give the most precious and intimate part of your body to someone who isn't serious about the relationship, you can find yourself alone and with a broken heart. Anyone who really cares will be willing to wait and not push sexual activity.

Discover all you can about these issues before you make the decision to begin or to continue sexual activity. It's a great thing to learn more about a topic before it becomes a possibility in your life. In times of crisis, it's hard to think straight so it may be time to think about different choices now to protect your future.

If you have been sexually active, please get tested for STDs. Even if you used a condom and your partner has told you that they don't have an STD. Then consider secondary virginity and choose to wait until marriage.

Here are just some of the benefits of making this informed choice:

• Abstinence is the only 100% effective gurantee that you won't get pregnant
• You won't get an STD (abstinence includes no oral sex)
• You will be spared the heartache and pain that sex often brings to an unmarried person

Choice is Freedom - choosing to wait for sexual activity until marriage is the healthy choice and you're worth it!

For more info please visit www.proknowledge.org