Approved doesn't mean available

[neadods]

My f-list exploded yesterday with joy that the FDA had approved Gardasil, the vaccine that protects against HPV and therefore against cancer. I would be a great deal more personally joyful if I wasn't so aware that the FDA has also long since approved the pill - which hasn't stopped the growing American Taliban from trying to make sure that just because it's legal doesn't mean it's going to be available to the women who want it.

When we can get Gardasil without a bunch of hysteria about sex and sexuality, THEN I'll rejoice. Because I have yet to see a single article about this vaccine, its testing, its uses, its coverage, etc. without at least one quote from Focus on the Family and its ilk, always beating the drum that abstinence programs - which haven't worked to stop STDs, teen pregnancy, or even abstinence from sexual activity - will magically protect women from cancer. As if that has anything to do with saving women's lives or the many ways in which virtuous girls can become exposed to HPV.

The message being touted here, under all the handwaving about being glad that the vaccine is available just as long as it isn't made mandatory, is simple: Don't make us protect our kids, because we think the little sluts deserve cooter cancer if they don't toe the line. Katha Pollitt states it beautifully in Virginity or Death! It's honor killing on the installment plan... Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time.

The FDA approval was only the smallest of steps in the right direction. The real battle is not yet begun.

Comments

[mtgat]

And you'd be amazed at the people who stare at you blankly when you point out that someday these kids you're afraid of talking to now will someday get married and still need to know about birth control. Even the ones who follow directions and Don't will likely follow the program and have no clue when they Do.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Bith control within marriage? Bite thy heathen tongue! Don't you know that the purpose of a marriage is to provide a quiverful of children for the woman to take care of? God will take care of anything that needs to be taken care of - and if hubby steps out and brings a bug home, well, that's the woman's fault too. She should have been a better wife and he wouldn't have strayed.

(I know someone who insists that one *only* gets married so that you can have kids and *only* has sex in order to get pregnant. No other reason for either activity is permissable. I have great sympathy for her husband, actually.)

[amilyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah...pointing out that MARRIED people want to control the number of children they have just buggers people's oh-so-wonderful-logic re: morality, abortion, sex, women's medicine and health...

My husband and I have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid having more children than the two we have (and he stays home to care for while I teach) now.

But...yeah...you're spouting what I grew up with. My paternal grandmother explained (in perfect seriousness) to me that "the reason your parents got divorced was because Delta was never truly submissive to Warren in her heart." [Mom is the most submissive person you've ever met. To everyone. Dad had been having routine affairs--that honest-to-god-no-one knew about--for over 12 years. And grandma's somehow psychic and can check on the condition of my mom's motives?]

I wonder how attentive your friend's husband is. I know that I'd lose interest in sex--and possibly claim some high-falutin' reason (though I'm too honest to do that, really)--if I didn't have SO much fun due to the skill and determination of my wonderful husband. Presuming that this is her honest opinion, though, I am with you: poor husband. If they're not communicating well about how to have Really Fun Sex: poor both of them.