Susan Cody: The Moral Dilemma of Unwedded and Teenage Sex: Some Think Cervical Cancer is Earned

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I was reading the news link on Empowher, regarding the moral objections to the HPV vaccination.

Many parents will not allow their girls to have the vaccination because they believe it will encourage them to have sex. Since behaviors like smoking leads to cancers, so having sex leads to HPV. Both are behaviors that are preventable, say the objectors to this vaccine.

Kimberly Martinez, executive director of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a nonprofit group that advocates teaching children not to have sex rather than to have safe sex.

"We don't need to be vaccinating children against something that can be prevented with a behavior change.
....We have to teach kids values and boundaries," she said. "If you give kids the vaccine, you're giving them a license to go have sex."

I find this troubling. Simply because having a penis and vagina is also, perhaps, a license to have sex.

I do not know if my girls will receive it. Simply because I worry enough about the vaccinations they need now, nevermind in 10-15 years! I also want to benefit from further studies because I always worry about side effects. The HPV vaccine is very new - that in itself is a worry. It will be several years before side effects will really be known.

Most teens don't have sex because they have had a vaccination or have a condom. They have sex because they want to, or due to peer pressure.

It is rather upsetting that a vaccination has to have a moral component, because HPV is contracted during sex.

Who cares how someone gets cancer?

With regard to this vaccine, there is something eerily reminiscent of the victimization of AIDS patients in the 1980s and early 90s. It was a gay thing. Therefore a moral thing. So somehow, they deserved it. They 'earned' it through immoral behavior.

Cancer is cancer. Nobody plays a moral card to a smoker who gets throat cancer or has a stroke.
Do they deserve moral judgment, too? No, but neither does someone with HPV or cervical cancer.
Find me a person who hasn't made a bad moral decision on this planet. You cannot. They are non-existent.

Cervical cancer is a CANCER. As we do not ask a person how they contracted AIDS, we need to do the same for someone with cervical cancer. Unless it's for a medical reason, it does not matter.

If a teen is going to have sex, they're going to have sex. A vaccination will not stop them. Ask a teen - their first fear is still pregnancy.

My point is that we all have the right to teach our children values based on our own beliefs. Moral beliefs, religious beliefs, social beliefs. Abstinence for teenagers is a good idea. How can anyone think otherwise?
But unless a virgin marries a virgin and never has sex with another human again, he or she has an 80% chance of contact with HPV.

Our children may do as they wish, once they reach the age of 18. As hard as it is for any parent to think - their sex life and sexual decisions as adults are none of our business. We can care, we can like or dislike, but every adult has the freedom to makes these choices.

I cannot imagine having the option of protecting my children from this terrible cancer and telling them years later, after they perhaps have cervical cancer, that I didn't protect them because I felt this disease was an earned behavior. I lost my mother to cancer as a child. I'll be darned if I lose my children to a cancer too.

Why they get it is not my concern, as a parent. Preventing them from getting it, is.

If protecting my kids means teaching abstinence combined with other avenues, then so be it. And I, as a parent with plenty of moral values, will do whatever I can to ensure my girls don't get cancer.

Cancer..... is cancer.

For more information - and to make up your own mind - clink on the link below
Quoted Source - http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=4728594&page=1