Shame on us

On the day New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was holed up in his Manhattan apartment, accused of frequenting thousand-dollar hookers though married and the father of three, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported one in four teenage girls in America has a sexually transmitted disease.

In its study the CDC tested 838 girls ages 14 to 19 for four infections. It found 26 percent of the girls – chosen at random from a 2003-04 national health survey – had at least one of these infections: human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer, chlamydia, which can lead to infertility, trichomoniasis or genital herpes.

The study marks the first time the CDC has tested teens for more than one sexually transmitted disease. Based on its findings, it estimates more than 3 million teenage girls in America have an STD.

The finger pointing started almost the instant the study aired. Planned Parenthood directed its at the Bush administration. "The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure, and teenage girls are paying the real price," said Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards.

Others found fault elsewhere. Nora Gelperin of the Web site Sex, Etc., which aims to educate teens about sex, told the Washington Post: "Sexuality is still a very taboo subject in our society. Teens tell us that they can't make decisions in the dark and that adults aren't properly preparing them to make responsible decisions."

Are millions of teenage American girls contracting sexually transmitted diseases because they are being told nothing about sex? Or is it because they are not being told enough about sex? Or is it because sex is all American teenagers – girls and boys – ever hear about?

In a nation prone to obsess, sex is our supreme obsession. It drips from the TV, oozes from the radio, seeps from the Web and the pages of magazines and books. We are fixated on it. It is a drumbeat that never breaks, and the message is anything but subliminal: Sex doesn't just sell; it satisfies.

Which, of course, is often untrue and which, of course, the 370,000 unwed teenage girls and at least some of the 1.3 million unmarried adult women who become pregnant in the United States each year can attest to. So, too, can the almost 10,000 American women who will contract AIDS/HIV this year – 80 percent of whom will get it through heterosexual contact – or the more than 100,000 women in the nation who have the virus that so far has claimed the lives of almost 100,000 of their peers.

Nonetheless, sex is portrayed as some kind of panacea. It is the Holy Grail of happiness, and once found, the clouds open and the blues blow away. In the midst of this media blitz, this barrage of bosoms and butts and bodies braided in bed, what other impression could American teenagers get than that theirs is a copulation-crazed country? Is it any wonder they are wondering what the fuss is all about?

Nor did Eliot Spitzer help to quiet the hysteria.

If only for the pained expression his wife wore while standing next to him, Spitzer's fall from grace this week for soliciting prostitutes was lamentable. But the true tragedy can be found in the federal court complaint against the prostitution ring Spitzer called on for his call girls and, in particular, in the wiretapped conversations described in the document between the principals of the ring and the young women who worked for them.

In one conversation a recently hired prostitute confided "she had never done anything like this before" and was afraid her family might find out. In another the owners of the ring complained about a different prostitute who had missed an appointment and speculated she might be on drugs. To which one of them replied: "A lot of these girls deteriorate to this point." A subsequent conversation has the owners grumbling about another prostitute who had left an appointment earlier than she should. They suspect she didn't stick around because she had children to pick up from school. "As a general rule," one of them said, "the girls who have children tend to have ... a little more baggage going on."

Young women who turn to prostitution and teenage girls who acquire sexually transmitted diseases might seem disparate. But how they feel about themselves might be closer than we think. Certainly, each shares a significant characteristic if not an origin: the failure of men in America – young and old – to honor women and to do them no harm.

On her MySpace page the 22-year-old woman identified in the days since as the prostitute whom the 48-year-old Spitzer invited to the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 13 writes: "When I was 17, I left home. It was my decision and I've never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again. Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless."

American corruption personified and collective was on display this week. That Eliot Spitzer would add to the misery of a woman not much older than a teenager herself and who, by her account, has borne a miserable life is shameful and sad. That one quarter of teenage girls in America have sexually transmitted diseases is, too. That we prefer to be titillated rather than to take action might be the saddest and most shameful note of all.