Stenzel, who calls herself “the Sex Lady,” said her mission began when as a counsellor in a crisis pregnancy centre she encountered too many women who said “I didn’t know” after they ended up with an incurable sexually transmitted disease (STD). She has also encountered too many women who, after having engaged in pre-marital sex, are now married and trying to have a baby, only to find that an STD has destroyed her reproductive system. Others have developed cervical cancer and had to have their uterus removed because they got the HPV virus through genital warts transmitted by a sex partner.

While God created sex, and “it’s awesome,” He put boundaries around it. He also gave men and women freedom to choose whether to follow the rules or to “shake our fist in His face” and disobey a path that leads to disease, pain and death, she warned.

God didn’t make a “bunch of rules to ruin your life,” she said. He created sex for marriage, she said. Love is not a reason to have sex, she said.

“Either you are married or you are not. A or B. Just like you can’t be sort of pregnant. You are either pregnant or you are not,” she said.

“If you are married, go for it. With the person you are married to.”

She warned the audience that “sex has a price tag,”

“Is it worth it?”

When working at the crisis pregnancy centre she found young women who were scared to death of being pregnant but with no awareness that being sexually active outside of marriage puts them at four times greater risk of contracting an STD. If the STD is bacterial, it can be cured. But a viral STD, such as herpes or HPV, will be with you for life. Of young people who have had sex outside of marriage, 67 per cent have had an STD, she said. More young women have died of cancer caused by an STD than have died of AIDs, she said. But the attitude has become “everybody gets them” the way everyone gets the chicken pox, she said.

Yet the focus on preventing pregnancy has put the focus on birth control rather than disease prevention. After a pregnancy scare, girls go on the pill or take a hormone shot that will make them more likely to get an STD, she said.

Pregnancy is not the problem, she said. “The behavior that got you pregnant is the problem.”

Unwanted pregnancy gives a young unmarried woman options that range from “bad, terrible or even worse,” she said.

Abortion is not like having a tooth extracted, she said. Women still suffer from the consequences five, 10 years later. Raising a child alone is not a good solution either. She has seen a 12-year-old girl pregnant with twins. She has met grandmothers who are 24 years old.

“It’s not easy to raise a child,” she said. “The number one indicator of poverty is a single-parent household.”

Adoption is the best option but it takes tremendous courage and maturity to give a child up, she said.

Stenzel said her own mother was the victim of rape at the age of 15 and decided to carry her to term in a state that allowed abortion in cases of rape.

“My biological father is a rapist,” she said. “I am still human. I don’t believe I deserved a death penalty because of the crime of my biological father.”

If you find yourself pregnant, get help at a crisis pregnancy centre, she said.

“I have held children I have saved from the death camps of our nation.”

Boys and girls bodies are different. Girls need to be taught their worth, that each one is a princess, a daughter of God, somebody’s daughter who deserves to be respected. A young man should tell a young woman, “I would never ask you to put your life on the line to satisfy my momentary need.”