catholicsphere

Christianity Today has two editorial articles covering the whole HPV vaccine issue. The first talks about the history behind the HPV-cervical cancer link, while the other opines about why requiring the vaccine is a bad idea.

In the article, ‘Tell Someone’? We tried, the question is asked “Why did people scoff eight years ago when we wanted to warn them?”

All the way back at the turn of this century, [Family Research Council] staffers Heather Farish (now Heather Cirmo) and Yvette Cantu (now Yvette Schneider) wrote in a thoroughly researched policy paper: “HPV has been linked to over 90 percent of all invasive cervical cancers, and is the number two cause of cancer deaths among women, after breast cancer. Approximately 16,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed each year, and 5,000 women die annually from this disease.” To back up their statistics, they cited such prestigious sources as The New England Journal of Medicine and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The concern then: Such research would make condom usage look bad - so Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the US shunned it.

There’s been no new information, yet now these groups (and some of those politicians who accepted donations from the vaccine manufacturer) have changed their tune. And they are once again calling Christians the bad guys.

But we can’t just leave it there. Instead, we need to learn something from the bitter ironies on display here: namely, that our society will gravitate toward any message that endorses sexuality unencumbered by biblical morality. If “telling someone,” as the ad campaign urges, means that they’ll be advocating safe sex, all well and good. But if the cause of free sex is better served by keeping silent, the message becomes, “Tell no one.” Not even if it might put her health at risk. The urge for absolute sexual autonomy and freedom from any kind of control is that powerful—and that deadly.

So, why not ’safe sex’ for the whole nation?

Given our culture’s commitment to people’s right to practice safe sex at any age, and our culture’s assumption that human beings, like animals, are utterly subject to their passions, mandating this vaccine makes sense.

Yes, people have sex before they are married.  Some have “unprotected sex”.  And, the fact of the matter is that all the sex education and condoms and abstinence talks and other advice, while perhaps being a bit of a deterrent (note that True Love Waits has been measurably successful in curbing teen sexual activity), is not going to eliminate teen sex.  So, something should be done.

But at what expense?

In this case, its at the expense of parental rights.  By creating an absolute requirement to receive the vaccine, without the ability to opt-out, the state has told parents that it knows best how to raise their children.  By this, I’m not speaking about parents retaining the ability (and illusion) that they can control their kids.  Rather, I’m talking about those who — rightly — believe it to be their responsibility and right under God to provide practical and spiritual advice and direction to their children.  Parents, not the state, are in the best position to weigh the best interests of their children.

Finally, this is precisely the inconsistent reasoning that I’ve talked about time and again.  Our government will tell parents that they “have no right to control what ideas the school presents to elementary schoolchildren, and if parents disagree with that dictate, they can take their children elsewhere”, but then tell them that they have the responsibility to protect their children from being exposed to what they deem harmful.

Throw into the mix this decision of government which doesn’t allow parents to decide what is most harmful, and it demonstrates that our government, and specifically the justice system, lacks any direction of thought necessary to resemble anything close to a guide to even the best interests of society.

Certainly not a trustworthy enough guide to be parents.

[tags]hpv, vaccine, parental rights, cervical cancer, christianity, justice, law, government, politics, religion, morals, faith, sex, teen, catholicsphere, true love waits, safe sex[/tags]