Lenny Bruce said, "A knowledge of syphilis is not an instruction how to get it." With this comment, Bruce was making both a simple and a complex point. Knowing that syphilis is contracted by engaging in unprotected intercourse with an infected person does not provide a blueprint for screwing diseased prostitutes in dirty alleyways was the simple point. Bruce's larger message was to highlight the brilliance of two unique aspects of American democracy contained in the Bill of Rights: the First Amendment and the separation of church and state.

If there had been no separation of church and state when Bruce made this comment in 1965, then the prevailing doctrinaire theological moralities, backed by the policing power of the government, would have placed an embargo on any discussion of sexuality. Remember, the established churches at the time, particularly the Catholic Church, did not condone any discussion of sexuality. The fact that someone might have knowledge of venereal disease presupposed that he or she understood the sexual act, and how one might go about acting it out - a veritable road map for damnation.

The Bill of Rights, however, empowers the state to disseminate the knowledge that syphilis exists, and that the disease is preventable through the use of condoms. The Bill of Rights ensures that state prerogatives are more important than ecclesiastical discomfiture - public health trumps private morality.

Public health and private morality collide in this month's feature "Like a Prayer: God and Abortion at the Pregnancy Support Center" by Molly Maeve Eagan (page 26). The Pregnancy Support Center, a pro-life organization with offices in New Paltz and Saugerties, describes as its mission "to uphold the value of human life by befriending, educating, comforting, and supporting those with pregnancy related needs." And while PSC does not discuss religion with its clients during counseling, its literature makes its scriptural foundation clear: "The center offers God's love by proclaiming the Gospel of Christ and His plan for sexuality, marriage, and the family to the community."

Contrast these goals with those of Planned Parenthood, the secular counterpart to the 700 pro-life pregnancy support centers in the US and Canada: "to provide comprehensive reproductive and complementary health care services in settings which preserve and protect the essential privacy and rights of each individual; to advocate public policies which guarantee these rights and ensure access to such services; to provide educational programs which enhance understanding of individual and societal implications of human sexuality; to promote research and the advancement of technology in reproductive health care and encourage understanding of their inherent bioethical, behavioral, and social implications."

PSC's mission of implementing God's plan for reproductive health is the definition of private morality - restrictive, mysterious, subjective. Planned Parenthood's goals are the exemplar of health in the public interest - inclusive, transparent, empirical.

When Chronogram began pursuing this story, I wondered if we would end up with a exposé of a Christian pregnancy center where scared young women, lured by misleading advertising, watch lurid video dramatizations of bloody fetuses being thrown into dumpsters behind cut-rate abortion clinics. And while the way PSC advertises its services borders on bait-and-switch tactics - a PSC pamphlet reads: "Are you pregnant and scared? The Center is a place where you can go for answers!" - the picture of the organization that emerged from our investigation was more nuanced than I had expected.

When a girl (sometimes as young as 13) decides to keep her baby, PSC provides material support for the child and mother. All the agencies we spoke to, including Planned Parenthood, said that while they may disagree ideologically with PSC, it is a vital resource for young mothers who start out with nothing in a region already strapped for social services.

Which leads us back to the First Amendment, and Lenny Bruce. "In freedom of speech, the accent is on freedom, not on speech," Bruce said. "It's the right to get it across, to communicate - the right of the reader to read it and the person to say it." And the duty of us all to know the difference between a sermon and science.

- Brian K. Mahoney