Cervical Cancer and Social Conservatives

According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 10,400 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer this year. Thirty-seven hundred will die of the disease. According to a Monday Washington Post article, a vaccine will shortly be available that will prevent infection by the papilloma virus, implicated in the majority of cervical cancers. And of course, since human papilloma virus is sexually transmitted, radical conservative groups are coming out to oppose the vaccine.

The Bush administration has taken the abstinance-only clique and put it in decision-making positions in Washington despite the abject failure of abstinance-only education in Texas. As the Administration and its syncophants preach abstinance-only, anti-abortion, anti-contraception and anti-condom, they cut programs to help the poor to fund their failure of a war and their tax cuts for their rich cronies. Dobson and Robertson get a tax cut while a single mom gets her food stamps cut. Is that conservative compassion?

The vaccine will sabotage our abstinance message, they claim in the mistaken hope that the Silver Ring Thing is somehow altering two million years of human sexuality. I would bet that most of these misinformed parents and preachers aren't aware of the phrase "technical virginity," a common phrase most often used, "Well, I'm technically a virgin...." Kids are doing it, people. We did it. You did it. Our forefathers did it. They did it in caves and they did it before our ancestors put the sapiens in genus homo. We like it. The intelligent designer made us to like it yet social conservatives somehow think they can alter human sexuality simply by saying don't do it. They said that two generations ago and look how many seven-month ten-pound babies were born. Social conservatives think sex education advocates promiscuity. They're wrong, humanity advocates promiscuity. Sex education gives alternatives.

These are the people claiming that the vaccine against papilloma will somehow encourage promiscuity among young women. They are the same ones who claim that over-the-counter sales of the Morning After pill will encourage promiscuity, never mind the fact that it might prevent an abortion or a decline of two lives into poverty. Where is the compassion of a group of people who will condemn 3700 women to death just to discourage sexual activity among their sexually active daughters? They are the same compassionate people who will demand that you keep your rape child, bear it to term then raise it on your own because we've cut eighty-eight million dollars for food stamps from the Federal budget. This is not a right to life movement, it's a right to birth movement. After birth, both you and your baby are on your own in their minds and any problems you encounter are God's righteous wrath for your sins in conceiving that child.

The most effective program against abortion is contraception and education. Social conservatives can't have it both ways and they can't change human nature. Abstinance is the only surefire protection against both unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases but we're not wired for abstinance. What abstinance-only education leads to is ignorance and abstinance will fail for over ninety percent of Americans. I prefer frank, open education making the point that abstinance is the only sure prevention, then informing our young what to do when abstinance inevitably fails. To me, that is compassion.