Brian Alexander writes in Glamour:
Through lobbying and testimony before Congress, the religious right attacked government sex-education programs that included information on condom use. The Family Research Council argued that such programs expose “our youth to incurable disease on a daily basis. Most notable among these diseases is human papilloma virus, HPV.” The government appeared to be listening. Until then, the CDC had accurately encouraged condom use as smart safe-sex behavior—but in 2002, around the time of the HPV flap, it backed off. The agency suddenly removed from its website a fact sheet on condoms that stated “laboratory studies show that intact latex condoms are highly effective barriers to…HIV and other STDs” and that told readers how to use them. Later that year, the fact sheet was replaced with one stressing sexual abstinence.
Despite condoms’ proven effectiveness against many STDs, especially HIV, conservatives continued to suggest that they were more of a hazard than a help. Just last year, Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., (R-Okla.) went so far as to demand that the FDA place a warning label on every condom package saying condoms don’t help protect against HPV. (He was unsuccessful.) The idea, contends Katharine O’Connell, M.D., an ob-gyn and assistant professor at Columbia University in New York City who studies contraception, is to hype the dangers of sex before marriage: Exaggerating condom failure and the risk of HPV “is simplifying the facts for the purposes of manipulating sexual practices,” she says. “This is not about condoms. It’s all about the sex.”
The Christian Right made a big deal out of the dangers of HPV not because they cared about women and didn’t want women to get cancer. Instead, they made a big deal out of HPV because they thought that making people afraid of HPV would encourage them to abandon both condom use and sex outside of marriage. Unfortunately, their tactic was not destined to last forever. First it became evident that condoms could be effective against HPV. That was a problem, but one they tried to deal with by simply suppressing or denying the information.
Less easy to deal with has been the development of a vaccine that would prevent almost all HPV — the first ever vaccine against any sort of cancer. This should be an occasion to cheer, but for the Christian Right it’s an occasion to circle the wagons and go on the defensive:
The world’s first anticancer vaccine would represent an incredible scientific breakthrough. But conservative groups began voicing objections as soon as the drugs started making headlines. Sen. Coburn, for one, testified before the House of Representatives that “going after one or two types [of HPV] is halfway,” a charge health experts find illogical since the HPV strains prevented by the vaccine account for most cases of cervical cancer.
“The public should be outraged at this misrepresentation of facts for political reasons,” says Dr. Holmes. “This really reveals the true agenda for those who have argued that the reason for not promoting condoms is to protect girls against HPV.” If you truly cared about HPV prevention, his reasoning goes, you’d be thrilled at the advent of a vaccine to save women’s lives. “It really illustrates that the opposition to condoms has nothing to do with protecting women and girls,” he says, “but everything to do with opposition to discussion of sexual health.”
People who are genuinely concerned with preventing sexually transmitted diseases will promote every effective means of stopping them. Even if one also opposes extra-marital sex, the consequence of disease should be more than enough to advocate education about condom use as well as administering the vaccine against HPV. It’s not unheard of to promote one type of behavior as preferable, but also to explain how to protect yourself from harm should you travel a less-favored road. At least, that’s the moral and healthy approach — two adjectives which simply do not apply to the Christian Right approach to sex.
The Washington Post has more information on the Christian Right’s objections to the HPV vaccine:
“Some people have raised the issue of whether this vaccine may be sending an overall message to teenagers that, ‘We expect you to be sexually active,’ “ said Reginald Finger, a doctor trained in public health who served as a medical analyst for Focus on the Family before being appointed to the ACIP in 2003, in a telephone interview.
“There are people who sense that it could cause people to feel like sexual behaviors are safer if they are vaccinated and may lead to more sexual behavior because they feel safe,” said Finger, emphasizing that he does not endorse that position and is withholding judgment until the issue comes before the vaccine policy panel for a formal recommendation.
Conservative medical groups have been fielding calls from concerned parents and organizations, officials said. “I’ve talked to some who have said, ‘This is going to sabotage our abstinence message,’ “ said Gene Rudd, associate executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. But Rudd said most people change their minds once they learn more, adding that he would probably want his children immunized. Rudd, however, draws the line at making the vaccine mandatory.
“Parents should have the choice. There are those who would say, ‘We can provide a better, healthier alternative than the vaccine, and that is to teach abstinence,’ “ Rudd said.
The idea that giving people a vaccine against HPV is a way to promote irresponsible behavior is absurd. When we pass out information about how to get a taxi from a bar, is this the same as promoting irresponsible drinking? When we teach people how to handle a car that is in a skid, is this the same as promoting irresponsible driving? Of course not. Either the people saying these things are completely irrational, or they don’t care about logic — instead, they care only about promoting their ideological agenda and will say anything, no matter how stupid, in service of that ideology.
Katha Pollitt comments on the stupidity of all this:
“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. [...]
Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time. No sex ed or contraception for teens, no sex for the unwed, no condoms for gays, no abortion for anyone--even for that poor 13-year-old pregnant girl in a group home in Florida. As they flex their political muscle, right-wing Christians increasingly reveal their condescending view of women as moral children who need to be kept in line sexually by fear.
That’s why antichoicers will never answer the call of prochoicers to join them in reducing abortions by making birth control more widely available: They want it to be less available. Their real interest goes way beyond protecting fetuses--it’s in keeping sex tied to reproduction to keep women in their place. ... “It all comes down to the evils of sex,” says [James Trussell, director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton]. “That’s an ideological position impervious to empirical evidence.”
And what about the idea of making the vaccines optional rather than mandatory? Aside from the fact that a vaccine like this, a vaccine that will be so effective against a deadly cancer, has never been made optional before is the simple fact that the suggestion is completely disingenuous. Rivka at Respectful of Otters explains why:
The idea of vaccine choice sounds reasonable on its face; Americans tend to believe that parents should be given wide latitude to make health decisions for their children, and some parents from both sides of the political spectrum choose to refuse all vaccinations for their kids. ... But “choice” is a red herring. Focus on the Family has religious objections to the HPV vaccine? Religious exemptions to mandatory vaccines are already available in every state but West Virginia and Mississippi. ... They will have the right to opt their daughters out of this health-, fertility-, and potentially life-saving vaccine, mandatory or not. What they’re really angling for is a way to deny it to other people’s daughters.
If it’s easy to opt out, why the battle over mandatory? Because mandatory = affordable. States cannot make a vaccine mandatory for school entry unless they are willing to provide it to those who cannot pay. And thus, through the CDC’s Vaccines For Children program, every state supplies children with required vaccines free of cost. But optional vaccines are a different story. For example, check out this price list for various optional vaccines at the Shelby County (Tennessee) Health Department; the price per shot is as high as $96. Required vaccines at the same clinic cost $8. And that’s at a health department, which is pretty much the cheapest place to get vaccinated anywhere. Put simply, if the HPV vaccine is not made mandatory, it probably won’t reach the low-income women and girls who need it most. Of course, that means that the Religious Right’s tax dollars won’t go towards providing women with an immunological license for promiscuity... and don’t think that they aren’t thinking of it that way.
Making the vaccine optional rather than mandatory is simply a way to ensure that most girls never get it — and that’s the point, just as the point of their abstinence-only education is a way to ensure that most young people don’t get proper information about sexual health, contraception, or anything else which contradicts their narrow religious ideology. Because the Christian Right has so much support in the Bush administration, they have been very successful in getting their ideology promoted on a nation-wide scale. This ideology has harmed the nation and, if they are allowed to continue on their anti-sex jihad, things will only get worse.
Christian Nationalism & Dominion Theology:
- Dominionism & Dominion Theology
- Christian Reconstructionism
- Leading Christian Reconstructionists
- Reconstructionism & Christian Right: Common Goals, Beliefs
Christian Right Issues & Agenda:
- Religious Privilege
- Christian Privilege
- Christian Supremacy
- How the Christian Right Undermines the Right to Abortion
- Why The Christian Right is Wrong About Abortion
- Pro-Life Inconsistencies on Abortion
- Christian Right vs. Birth Control
- Christian Right vs. Emergency Contraception
- Evangelical Christianity & Homosexuality
It’s as if they’re saying, “Live the way we tell you or don’t live at all!”
“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.” Exactly… Schools have had abstinence-only sex-ed programs for years and yet the number of teenagers or anyone engaging in pre-marital sex hasn’t decreased a bit, despite the threat of STDs. I guess the Christian Right is simply in denial about the failure of their program, and it’s costing us. Also, no religious ideology is more important than someone’s life (potentially losing it to cancer in this case), and yet by opposing the vaccine being mandatory or even its very existence, they are essentially saying that it is.
I’m disappointed that you don’t have an “Abstinence should not be taught in schools, and only by parents and churches. Sex ed should be taught, including contraception” type choice in your poll Austin.
Katha Pollitt is ****ing sick!! “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.” I’m disgusted that anyone could say that.
Pandamonk:
1. Why are you disappointed?
2. Pollitt is describing the attitudes of others, not her own beliefs. You did know that, right?
And I thought sex ed over here in Britain was bad…
The best way of reducing teenage pregnancy and the number of people with STDs is good (read – scientifically accurate and honest) sex ed, which in my opinion is best achieved with heavy use of a textbook (books, unlike teachers, are not embarrassed about the subject, are always available for reference and do not forget crucial details. In many ways books of the ‘good sex guide’ genre are far more informative and are paid far more attention that either teachers or biology textbooks. They are also aimed at an adult audience which means they are less patronizing than sex ed literature aimed at teens).
PS apologies for length, but I feel it would have been bad form to criticize but not to offer an alternative