Joycelyn Elders Quotes

We've tried ignorance for a thousand years. It's time we try education.

We know that more than 70 to 80% of women masturbate, and 90% of men masturbate, and the rest lie.

They are boycotting common sense.

I'm against abstinence programs because I really consider "abstinence only" child abuse.

"I grew up on a farm in a three-room shack. I was the oldest of eight children. We were very poor. We didn’t have running water. We didn’t have electricity, so we didn’t 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 couldn’t grow up wanting to go into public health, or even wanting to be a doctor, because I’d never even heard of that. You can’t be what you can’t see".

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.

If you can't control your reproduction, you can't control your life.

As 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.

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 don't understand the problems of *needing* and *not having*. Perhaps they've never been there themselves. Nobody wants to be poor. We all want food, clothing, and shelter. And health care, too.

We must stop this love affair with the fetus.

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

"__ I think that we have made a lot of progress. But you know, it took thousands of years to get here. Can you imagine that in 1960 it was illegal for married people to use condoms".

If men went through menopause, we'd know everything about it, but we still don't even know if we should be taking hormones.

I want every child that's born in the world to be planned and wanted.

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.