“Marriage is good for your sex life, but both it and religion could
harm your sexual health.

The first ever global survey of sexual behaviour, studying more than a
million men and women from 59 countries, has found that while married
people have the most sex, marriage is not a safeguard for sexual
health. “Married women typically find it harder than single women to
negotiate safer sex and condom use, leaving them more vulnerable to
infections and unplanned pregnancies,” says Kay Wellings at the London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who led the research.

Perhaps surprisingly, countries where people have the most sexual
partners – the developed world – also have the lowest incidence of
sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies. The reason
could be that condom use is far more common in these countries,
Wellings says.

Religion is a real problem in reproductive health, says Joy Phumaphi,
assistant director general of the World Health Organization. People
who follow religions that frown on contraception still have more
children than they can support, and the lack of safe abortion centres
harms thousands of women, she says. Only part of the blame lies with
Catholicism and other major religions, Phumaphi says. “The biggest
problem is many independent churches have huge influence and very
extremist views.”

The survey is part of a batch of sex and reproductive health papers
published this week in The Lancet.
From issue 2576 of New Scientist magazine, 04 November 2006, page 7

The subject line does not match the article. The subject line would only be
true depending on your definition of sexual health. It says that the lack of
safe abortion centers harms thousands of wonmen, but it is not clear what
role religion has in the actual harm, or what the harm exactly is, although
one would assume it means that women try to get unsafe abortions. But since
religions discourage abortion, how can they be blamed for unsafe abortions
in general?
Also it doesn’t actually say that having lots of babies harms sexual health.
It says religions have extremist views but doesn’t make clear how exrtremist
views harm sexual health, and doesn’t define exactly what sexual health is.