State offers ten bucks for young women's sex secrets

The conceit of the social engineers of the liberal elite has found vivid expression in the state of Florida. There, the state Department of Health is handing out $10 gift cards to nubile young women (targeting the ages 18-24) if they fill out a 46-question survey, probing the most intimate details of their sexual self-expression.

Btittany Wallman of the Sun-Sentinel writes:

State officials said the unprecedented, $45,000 survey will help them understand women's need for and approach to family-planning services.

Hundreds of women in South Florida were among the survey recipients, their names pulled from the white pages by a private company, state officials said. They were asked to voluntarily tell the state how many men they'd had sex with in the past year, whether a man had ever poked holes in a condom to get them pregnant, and how they felt emotionally when they last had unprotected sex.

The language of the questions is direct and unblinking:

• How did you feel emotionally when you had unprotected sex - were you trying to get pregnant, were you in the "heat of the moment and just went with the flow," or did you find the man attractive and "thought it would be nice to have a baby with him?" Did you feel "powerless"? Or was it that you "felt emotionally connected with your partner during sex"?
• How old were you when you first had sex? Last time you had sex with a man, did you do anything to keep from getting pregnant? If not, why not?
• Has a sexual partner ever "told you he would have a baby with someone else if you didn't get pregnant?" "Physically forced you to have sex?" "Hurt you physically because you did not agree to get pregnant?"
• Are you depressed? Have you ever been physically abused? What's your religion? Do you smoke? How much do you weigh?

"Taking part is up to you. You can refuse to take part. You can join now and quit later. Either way, it won't affect how we treat you," says a letter sent Oct. 2 by Acting Director Betsy Wood of the state Division of Community Health Promotion, in the health department.

The intent here is not prurient, it is something worse: a desire to create a behavioral model of young women's sexual behavior, so they can be manipulated into certain desired outcomes (low levels of fertility, for example) through the use of incentives, penalties, and other forms of behavioral manipulation.

The organizers of the project are scrambling to explain themselves, and reassure Floridians that this is not as bad as it sounds. It turns out at least one girl under 18 received the survey, and they apologize effusively. Hey nobody's perfect. But rest assured the data will remain confidential, despite nobody being perfect. You see, three different companies worked on the questionnaire, and only one person, a doctoral student at Florida A&M, has access to all of the names matched with the answers, so everything is fine.   "The survey went through 48 revisions as it was vetted by two institutional review boards, one at the state health department and one at FAMU, [state surgeon general Jack] Armstrong said."

Nothing to see here, move along. Except that we are creating a force that stands above us, funded by whatever it wants to take from us, that is building a scientific basis for manipulating the most intimate aspects of our behavior to conform with what it believes is best for us.

This is no surprise, of course. But it is getting more blatant, and even ordinary, and now there is Obamacare.

Hat tip: David Paulin