I like to collect studies on my blog so that I can always find them when I get into a debate. One of the things I like to argue against is recreational premarital sex. It’s pretty hard to argue this with non-Christians if all you are going to do is quote the Bible. But you can make a pretty good case that will win you the argument from studies, and so I keep a nice collection of studies to use.

Here’s the report from The Federalist:

Oral contraceptives raise the risk of depression, according to a new international study that surveyed more than 264,000 women. Teenagers were at the highest risk, with a 130 percent higher risk of depression in women who started using birth control as adolescents, compared to a 92 percent higher risk among those who started as adults.

The study provides conclusive results to a growing body of research linking oral birth control with the use of anti-depressants, depression diagnoses, and depressive symptoms.

While adult users saw a decrease to more normal risk after using “the pill” for more than two years or getting off the pill, teenage users were still at increased risk even after stopping usage.

Very interesting. I clicked on the link to the study and made sure it was peer-reviewed. It was. So what do we learn from this?

Well, this is not the first time I am hearing about the emotional and mental problems with birth control pills. So, I think the lesson here is to definitely do your research first, so that you don’t get involved with things that will cause you problems later. The woman who told me about had tried to go on them, but she immediately noticed how much it changed her moods, and she went off them. I think it caused her some problems in her life, because she ended up taking 5 years to complete her degree, instead of the normal for. So, using these things could really cost you.

Now you might be wondering about other birth control methods, and the team that did this study has a plan for future work:

This study only examined combination birth control pills, but researchers plan to study other contraceptive options.

“In a future study, we plan to examine different formulations and methods of administration. Our ambition in comparing different contraceptive methods is to give women even more information to help them [m]ake well-informed decisions about their contraceptive options,” Johansson said.

The article also notes (with links, which I removed):

In other studies, birth control methods have also been linked to increased risk of heart attack and stroke, blood clots, breast cancer, and cervical cancer.

Despite significant evidence of risk, researchers still insist that birth control is safe to use…

Normally, I am pretty hard on women on this blog. I feel like they make way too many decisions by following the crowd, instead of thinking about what they want in the long-term, and then making decisions that are likely to get those results – whatever anyone else thinks. I think that women need to be smarter than that, and instead of forming their views by peer pressure, they need to form their views based on truth. And truth is not on the bottom shelf.

I see women getting taught all about sexual topics by public school teachers, entertainers, athletes, celebrities, etc. It makes no sense to me. These people are insulated from real life, for one reason or another. And then I see Planned Parenthood going into the schools and teaching children about birth control and sex. They make money by getting these kids to become sexual active and then pay them to get abortions. Young women cannot trust women their own age to know about studies. They can’t trust teachers with degrees in English. They can’t trust celebrities, entertainers and athletes – they probably cannot even read, much less read studies. Women have to do their own research and make their own plans that work for them.

Today women are being taught from preschool to college and beyond, that they need to use their “young years” to seek happiness by playing the field with tall, hot men who give them tingles. They are told to delay marriage (boring) and children (demanding) for as long as possible, in order to have no-commitment sex with the hottest men they can get. Somehow, having sex with a lot of hot men is thought to raise the value of the woman. It builds her self-esteem, or something. This is objectively stupid behavior. But this is why they jump all over birth control, because it helps them to do stupid things that they’ve been told to do. They don’t even know the long-term effects of the behavior they’re doing. It’s monkey-see, monkey-do. The blind leading the blind.

So, I think it’s good for us as grown-ups to point them towards the data that they should know about. They can certainly ignore it, and go with their feelings. But some of them will prefer to get the real truth about how the world works, and those are the ones we need to reach. They should at least have a choice to make.

By the way, I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea to give someone a Bible. I got one when I was young, and that worked for me. But for people who ask questions, you need to have the studies ready. Always be ready for anyone who asks you questions about why you believe what you believe.

I noticed an article in the Financial Times about a growing divide between young women and young men. Young women are  increasingly leftist, and young men are increasingly conservative. Surveys of young men and young women have found that young men are more conservative on abortion and LGBT than young women. And now young men are more religious than young women.

Now, I want to be clear in this post that I am not criticizing all women. I am criticizing the majority of YOUNG WOMEN. Older women don’t usually have these problems, especially married older women.

First, let’s take a look at the previous article, from the far-left UK Independent:

An analysis of survey data from across the developing world had found that “a new global gender divide” is emerging. The analysis, conducted by the Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch, showed that the developed world’s young women have rapidly become more liberal. Young men, however, have either become more conservative (as in the US) or been much slower to become more progressive (as in the UK). Gen Z, Burn-Murdoch concluded, is “two generations, not one.”

[…]Quoting similar figures to those in the FT, and noting that political views have become more tightly bound to personal identity, a Washington Post editorial warned that members of Gen Z will struggle to pair off romantically.

Young men, statistically speaking, are more likely to side with the weak against the strong. Since abortion harms unborn children, and divorce and same-sex marriage harm born children, men typically oppose these behaviors. But statistically speaking, young women more often side with the selfish adults against the children.

Naturally there are exceptions, but the statistics show that young men are more conservative on moral issues than young women. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the issue of abortion, which is really just about whether selfish adults can resort to murdering their own children in order to escape the consequences of no-commitment sex.

In September 2024, Gallup explained how young men and young women view abortion:

For this, Gallup reviewed 24 questions from its trends archive that measure Americans’ beliefs or positions on widely debated policy-related issues, and that Gallup has asked frequently enough to produce sufficient sample sizes of young men and women across the three periods… On five of these, the percentage of young women holding the liberal position has increased by more than 15 points. These have to do with the environment, abortion and gun laws.

• Young women have become 18 points more likely to support broad abortion rights, saying abortion should be legal under any or most circumstances (rather than in only a few or no circumstances). Their preference for this position rose from 42% to 60% between 2008-2016 and 2017-2024.

The number for young men is much lower than 60% at only 48%!

So, what happens to young men when they take these traditional MALE positions on issues, and society disapproves of them? Well, they turn to God for vindication of their good moral views. If society won’t approve of young men for protecting the unborn from abortion, and protecting children from divorce and same-sex marriage, then young men will have to find their vindication somewhere else. And that somewhere else is God.

Here’s the latest from the far-left New York Times: (archived)

For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.

[…]Among Generation Z Christians, this dynamic is playing out in a stark way: The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip.

Church membership has been dropping in the United States for years. But within Gen Z, almost 40 percent of women now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, compared with 34 percent of men, according to a survey last year of more than 5,000 Americans by the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute.

To be accurate, I don’t think that young women have been more religious than men. If you look at the kinds of books that young women tend to read, it’s more about comfort and life enhancement. They are not looking to get their orders from God. They are looking to get their desires met by God. And you can see that coming out in the new trends of “manifesting” that is so popular with young women.

By contrast, young men are more likely to turn to apologetics, science, history and theology. Young women were only “spiritual”, they were not looking to sacrifice themselves in order to serve God. You can see this by looking at what books young women and men read. Young women tend to read people like Rachel Hollis,  Rachel Held Evans, and Sarah Young. Young men see religion as being about their duties to others. They read people like J. Warner Wallace, Frank Turek and Sean McDowell. They want to learn how to tell people the truth, and tell people right and wrong. They want to lead in moral and spiritual areas. They want to make the world a better place for the weakest people.

How did this happen? Well, we have had generation after generation of pietistic Christian parents and pietistic Christian pastors who thought that it was the height of chivalry to only apply the Bible to young men, and never to young women. Young men need to be “challenged”, but never young women. People acted as if women had some sort of hotline to God through their emotions, and could never be judged for any of their questionable policy preferences and choices.

My question for you is this: do you think that these pietistic parents and pietistic pastors will finally stop asking the question “Where are all the good men?” and start asking a much better question “Where are all the good women?” Because I can tell you right now, conservative religious men are not going to be interested in dating or marrying these secular leftist young women.

Marriage is a huge risk for young men, in a world of no-fault divorce, biased divorce courts and feminized public schools. Good young men are not going to take those risks just to give secular leftist young women their “happily ever after” once they tire of “having fun” with hot bad boys, and want to settle down. And no amount of shaming and blaming is going to force good men to take those risks.

By the way, I’ve noticed that a lot of good young men are now seeking out friendships with more traditional older women. They are looking for sanity, and validation for their good moral and religious views. That’s not surprising. They’ll go where they are respected.