Why is it that we Americans become outraged at the way women are treated in some foreign countries? Traditions, both cultural and religious, target young women for everything from genital mutilation to honor killings of rape victims. Should we be horrified? Yes. But if the brutalization of women in other cultures shocks us, why do we allow legislation here that prevents women from access to medical treatment based on religious belief?
If you thought we’d gotten over all that with the advent of The Pill, think again. Medical science has improved contraception methods even as fundamentalist preachers teach that all contraception is sinful, abstinence being the only approved family planning.
When I was a child, Catholic teaching held that the only acceptable means of family planning was the rhythm method. Because the vagaries of the female cycle doomed this to frequent failure, there were many large Catholic families. A popular joke of the day was: What do you call couples who use the rhythm method? Answer: Parents.
But there were also Catholic families with only two or three children. Hence the prevailing attitude that the Church ban on “artificial” contraception was one that was tacitly ignored.
Unfortunately, girls were also told that unwanted pregnancy was God’s punishment for engaging in premarital sex. Abortion was illegal and many teen-aged girls were sent to homes for unwed mothers to await delivery of a baby that would be put up for adoption.
This was to save their families from shame. It didn’t, because everyone always found out. I knew several girls who had illegal abortions, some with horrific consequences. Did these draconian measures stop, or even slow down teen pregnancies? Not one whit.
After Roe vs. Wade became law, we heard much less about girls in hospital with peritonitis, or taking unexplained vacations from school.
The AIDS epidemic, once it was understood to be more than a homosexual disease, changed many attitudes about contraception. Condom distribution was helpful, saving teen-aged boys from embarrassment at the pharmacy, and because the risk of dying was greater than the risk of unintended procreation. Even the Pope has considered a dispensation on condom use for married couples if one partner is diagnosed with HIV.
So why is there so much emphasis from evangelicals on abstinence-only education? Isn’t it better for young people to know the real facts of life? I understand why many people feel abortion is wrong, but wouldn’t it be better to eliminate the need for abortion through accurate education? Saving girls from fatal disease and unwanted pregnancy, or the painful decision to end a pregnancy, has to be kinder than denying the facts. Statistics show that teenagers, who break vows of premarital abstinence, are less likely to protect themselves from disease and conception. And if life is sacred, isn’t it less harmful to allow young women access to EC (the morning after pill), rather than risking abortion?
The current flap over proposals to require vaccinations for HPV, human papilloma virus, is a case in point. Opponents on the religious right say it would promote promiscuity to give young girls immunity against the sexually transmitted disease. Now, there may be several valid reasons to debate this policy before it is mandated, but that’s not one of them. Girls were engaging in risky sexual behavior long before they ever heard of HPV. In the first place, HPV isn’t clap, or syphilis or herpes or even HIV. Symptoms may not appear for years, if ever, and cervical cancer not until much later in life. Young people are into now. Anything could happen later.
What no one is talking about are the other effects of the virus, not the least of which are problem pregnancies with miscarriage and seriously premature births. If we’re trying to save lives, the vaccination would probably be more effective in promoting healthy births than preventing the estimated 3,670 cancer deaths attributable to HPV.
Mandating the vaccine for girls entering sixth grade is problematic because it makes insurance companies pick up the tab. At $360 for the required three-shot regimen, this could be a substantial burden on parents in states where it is not required for school entrance. Also, it’s the poor and uninsured who can’t afford regular pap smears to test for cervical cancer or pay for treatment and thus are most likely to die.
Since the FDA approved the vaccine last year, 26 state legislatures have initiated bills requiring it. Let’s hope decisions on these bills are guided by health considerations rather than religious views.