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Joycelyn Elders Quotes (1933-)
About Joycelyn Elders
Minnie Joycelyn Elders (born August 13, 1933) was Surgeon General of the United States from September 8, 1993 to December 31, 1994.
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βThey are boycotting common sense.β
βWe must stop this love affair with the fetus.β
βI want every child that's born in the world to be planned and wanted.β
βCondoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.β
βAs long as I was in Washington I never met anybody that I thought was good enough, who knew enough, or who loved enough to make sexual decisions for anybody else.β
β""A core belief of mine is the importance of honesty. When we stop talking openly about sex, we stop communicating important information to our young people. Then you have worse reproductive health, more teenage pregnancy, higher rates of HIV/AID".β
β"I believe that the reason we do not see health care as a human right is that our country is run by a class of white men who donβt understand the problems of *needing* and *not having*. Perhaps theyβve never been there themselves. Nobody wants to be poor. We all want food, clothing, and shelter. And health care, too."β
β"I grew up on a farm in a three-room shack. I was the oldest of eight children. We were very poor. We didnβt have running water. We didnβt have electricity, so we didnβt have TV or radio. No one had health care. There were no health facilities for miles and miles. The first time I saw a doctor was when I was a freshman in college. So I couldnβt grow up wanting to go into public health, or even wanting to be a doctor, because Iβd never even heard of that. You canβt be what you canβt see".β
β"Absolutely. You can do both. I feel that parents should educate their children about their sexuality and teach them the things they want them to know. But so often, what they're taught is what I was taught - to just say no. We have been taught abstinence only. We've been taught nothing about protection from diseases or anything. We've been taught nothing about contraception. And, you know, we say well, if we tell them about it, they'll do it. Well, if you've got the highest rates in the world, that says you're already doing it."β
β"I think that we need to look at health - sexual health - as a part of our overall health, and I don't feel that you can really be healthy unless you are sexually healthy. And I truly feel that we need to start educating our children about sex from kindergarten through 12th grade, so that they can respect their sexuality and protect their sexuality so that they can be - have sexual health throughout their lives. Other countries do it. Why do we have to have the highest teenage pregnancy, highest rates of STDs, the highest rates of HIV in our adolescents? It's because we feel that ignorance is bliss, and it's not bliss. We got to educate our young people."β
Joycelyn Elders Quotes by Topic
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Joycelyn Elders on Abortion
β[Abortion opponents] love little babies, as long as they're in somebody else's uterus.β
Joycelyn Elders on Abstinence
βI'm against abstinence programs because I really consider "abstinence only" child abuse.β
Joycelyn Elders on Masturbation
βWe know that more than seventy to eighty percent of women masturbate, and ninety percent of men masturbate, and the rest lie.β
Joycelyn Elders on Sexuality
βSexually transmitted diseases, ranging from the serious to the fatal, are a fact of life in high schools and neighborhoods across the country. Misinformation and scare tactics about common sexual practices like masturbation are rampant. Despite these facts, and despite parents' overwhelming desire for their children to receive detailed sex education at school as well as at home, our society remains unwilling to make sexuality part of a comprehensive health education program in the schools and anxious to the point of hysteria about young people and sex...Hysteria about sex has hindered attempts to address these pressing concerns, and the people hurt most are those who most need the informationβour young people, the poor, and the uninformed. Ignorance is not bliss.β
Joycelyn Elders on Hebephilia
βSexually transmitted diseases, ranging from the serious to the fatal, are a fact of life in high schools and neighborhoods across the country. Misinformation and scare tactics about common sexual practices like masturbation are rampant. Despite these facts, and despite parents' overwhelming desire for their children to receive detailed sex education at school as well as at home, our society remains unwilling to make sexuality part of a comprehensive health education program in the schools and anxious to the point of hysteria about young people and sex...Hysteria about sex has hindered attempts to address these pressing concerns, and the people hurt most are those who most need the informationβour young people, the poor, and the uninformed. Ignorance is not bliss.β
Quotes About Joycelyn Elders
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Rush Limbaugh on Joycelyn Elders
βI heard on the way over here, by the way, that they've come up with a new nominee for surgeon general: Pee-Wee Herman, is....You don't think that would have happened if it weren't for the fact that you were all elected do you? This is a sensitive subject and I am not gonna mention it because she got canned for it, but I'll tell ya, she said much worse than this. And she said far stupider things, like βThe way to combat crime is with safer bullets, with safer guns.ββ
About Joycelyn Elders
Minnie Joycelyn Elders (born August 13, 1933) was Surgeon General of the United States from September 8, 1993 to December 31, 1994.