A Disturbing Mindset

There is a new vaccine on the market. It protects girls and women against cervical cancer and genital warts that are caused by a specific set of viruses. The tests show that it will prevent 70% of all cervical cancers and 90% of genital warts. Both of these conditions are passed on by sexual contact.

To be most effective, the girls have to be vaccinated before they become sexually active. Once a woman is sexually active, the vaccine still offers considerable protection, but not as great as when the girls are vaccinated around the age of nine.

You would think that people would be doing handsprings that this terrible disease has become manageable. In some instances, however, this is not the case. There is a vocal group out there who don't want the vaccine even offered because they fear it will "encourage young women to be sexually promiscuous". I admit I don't even begin to understand why someone would deny this unarguably life-saving vaccination to their own children, much less want to see it denied to every other child.

If the argument were that the drug has no long term studies for its safety or that the side effects are not well known as yet, I would acknowledge that those are both valid reasons to take a wait and see attitude. Many of us remember a drug called DES which was given to pregnant women to prevent miscarriages. Over time it became evident that while the drug indeed prevented miscarriages, it also exposed female children born to those mothers to an inordinately high incidence of cervical cancer.

What I find mind boggling is that there are parents out there who would see their own daughters die or become permanently sterile by a preventable disease for no other reason than as a punishment for having sex before marriage. This same argument was offered against the birth control pill where the threat of an unwanted pregnancy was punishment for not heeding the warnings against premarital sex. I find such narrow minded focus to be utterly incomprehensible. Yes. Abstinence is undoubtedly the best path for the majority of youngsters for a variety of reasons. It is, however, unrealistic to expect to terrorize them into abstaining. This sort of mindset and control has to come from within not be imposed from without. The biggest thing is that it begs off recognizing human nature, rape, incest, and a number of other factors.

Simply put, sometimes people don't think rationally and young people often exhibit poor judgment and do things that they really shouldn't do. They are impulsive and thoughtless. We can curb this tendency in our children to some extent, but not entirely. The consequences of such actions should not be death or an unwanted pregnancy. Pregnancy should never be viewed as a punishment. I also defy anyone, religious or not, to tell me why one bad decision should condemn a girl to a long, slow, painful death. What these people seem to be saying is that they would prefer to see their daughters die from cervical cancer than risk that she might have premarital sex and have the punishment element removed. Further, they are saying that no only should their own daughters be exposed to the risk of dying from this preventable disease, but that everyone else's daughter should as well. I find this to be a disturbing mindset.