Great piece by Katha Pollitt in CBS news:
Imagine a vaccine that would protect women from a serious gynecological cancer. Wouldn’t that be great? Well, both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that they have conducted successful trials of vaccines that protect against the human papilloma virus. HPV is not only an incredibly widespread sexually transmitted infection but is responsible for at least 70 percent of cases of cervical cancer, which is diagnosed in 10,000 American women a year and kills 4,000.
Wonderful, you are probably thinking, all we need to do is vaccinate girls (and boys too for good measure) before they become sexually active, around puberty, and HPV — and, in thirty or forty years, seven in ten cases of cervical cancer — goes poof.
Not so fast: We’re living in God’s country now. The Christian right doesn’t like the sound of this vaccine at all. “Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful,” Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, “because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.” Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they’ve probably never heard of.
I remember when people rolled their eyeballs if you suggested that opposition to abortion was less about “life” than about sex, especially sex for women. You have to admit that thesis is looking pretty solid these days. No matter what the consequences of sex — pregnancy, disease, death — abstinence for singles is the only answer. Just as it’s better for gays to get AIDS than use condoms, it’s better for a woman to get cancer than have sex before marriage. It’s honor killing on the installment plan.
Read the whole thing.
ppgaz
Well, there you have it.
In China, until rather recently on the grand historical scale, an unmarried woman who found herself expecting a child was duty bound to throw herself down a well, or otherwise remove her stain from the family’s honor.
What you see on the religious right is essentially the same type of medieval madness, just with different words and different scenarios.
When adversaries find themselves wondering why I get so worked about the right, and why I consider them the enemies of this country …. this story is a good example.
Mr Furious
Grrrrrr.
Brad R.
John Cole writes “Great piece by Katha Pollitt.”
*blinks*
John, if ya keep this up, I’m gonna have to induct you into the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy to Sap and Impurify Budweiser and Replace it With Fruity Imported Beers. ;-)
Stormy70
I don’t know anyone who buys into this BS on the right. It sounds like a health issue any teenage girl can get at her OB-GYN’s office along with her first pap smear. Sex has nothing to do with this issue, so this Family Research Council woman is an idiot.
Pollitt sounds a little hysterical to me as well, with her “honor killing on the installment plan” bullshit. Just another reason to lump everyone who believes in God with this one right wing nut.
John Cole
Yeah- my stomache flipped when I wrote that.
Nikki
Stormy,
If a teen is enrolled with an HMO, I doubt her OBGYN will mention the vaccine until the teen has actually contracted the HPV. Heck, I had to tell my OBGYN about the Ring birth control; he knew nothing about it.
Stormy70
I thought this was a new vaccine. Once the word gets out, I am sure most OBs will recommend it, or parents will ask for it.
Christie S.
I find Bridget Maher’s argument naively short-sighted. Keeping your young people virgin in a commendable ideal, if you can do it.
Ms. Maher’s premise is that having the vaccine available will/may promote a more licentious attitude in young people. Well, unless some wunderkind comes up with a vaccine to suppress normal puberty and all the raging hormones associated with that state, there is NO WAY that you will be able to turn off the normal sexual urges of people, young or mature.
Teaching your kids about abstinence is a great policy. I firmly support the idea. But…don’t be stupid along the way.
Rolling the dice that your teachings are going to be remembered during a heated make-out session in a back seat is criminally negligent.
As for the the HPV vaccine? Guess what…MY daughter will get it at her first Gyn appointment if and when it becomes commercially available.
I’m stressing waiting for marriage, myself, but I’m not stupid. This vaccine has the chance to prevent this disease in 70% of the occurences. 40% of the women who get this disease will die. 40%. I don’t want my daughter to fall into that percentage.
I care more for my daughter’s life than her hymen.
Dave Ruddell
I care more for my daughter’s life than her hymen.
Oooh! Good line Christie S.! It would make a fine slogan for STD education.
HH
Next thing you know Sullivan will praise Katha “Your Stammering is Eloquent” Pollitt.
kensan
God forbid that one of these virgins , taught abstainance and sundry virtues becomes a victim of sexual assault. I don’t want to have to tell my daughters that they could have been protected against cancer but i was too wrapped up in my own beliefs to meet my parental obligations to always protect my children. Who thinks this way?