Abstinence all around..The Star Tribune!

Check out this interview about you guessed it…Abstinence..the Condom!

By Gail Rosenblum, Star Tribune

There’s nothing too surprising about a safe-sex campaign promoting abstinence. This time, though, the abstinence promoters are an unlikely bunch of left-leaning doctors, sexual health educators and marketers.

That’s because Abstinence, in this case, is the name of a new condom, manufactured and tested in accordance with Food and Drug Administration standards. The tagline: “Having sex or thinking about it? Choose Abstinence … the condom.”

Get it?

The lubricated latex condoms, targeting teens and young adults, are sold only via the Internet, “although we’d definitely like to see this in retail,” said Chicago-based marketer Peter Benkendorf, who developed the condom concept with a young filmmaker named Guy Clark, also of Illinois.

Benkendorf said the product’s name, and its accompanying Web promo (abstinencethecondom.com), are meant as a “tweak at hypocrisy. It’s very Jon Stewart-esque. Stewart and Stephen Colbert are getting a sophisticated message across and young people understand that.”

Benkendorf referred to a recent Centers for Disease Control study revealing that one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, and noted that the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the western world.

“While sex is not something to be rushed into,” he said, “at the end of the day you still have to be prepared.”

Abstinence the Condom was developed as an offshoot of the “Midwest Teen Show,” a Chicago-based podcast created by Clark that tackles dicey issues of young adult sexual health (including masturbation, birth control and, yes, abstinence) with candid information dished out with often biting wit.

The “Abstinence” campaign is supported by health professionals, including Victor Strasburger, chief of the division of adolescent medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Read the full article here: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/family/18893764.html

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