Good News for Women, Setback for Fundie Whackjobs. It Was Ever Thus

Today's NYT reports that, "A federal vaccine advisory panel voted unanimously yesterday to recommend that all girls and women ages 11 to 26 receive a new vaccine that prevents most cases of cervical cancer.

The vote all but commits the federal government to spend as much as $2 billion alone on a program to buy the vaccine for the nation's poorest girls from 11 to 18.

The vaccine, Gardasil, protects against cancer and genital warts by preventing infection from four strains of the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted disease, according to federal health officials. The virus is also a cause of other cancers in women."

Of course, the news was received with a scowl by the whatjob fundies who hate women and want to make sure that they (1) don't enjoy sex and (2) suffer for it if they do. The article notes that, "Because Gardasil prevents a sexually transmitted disease, some religious groups have sounded reservations about vaccinating young girls.

'You can't catch the virus, you have to go out and get it with sexual behavior,' said Linda Klepacki of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group based in Colorado Springs. 'We can prevent it by having the best public health method, and that's not having sex before marriage.' [Which, I'll only point out has NEVER worked, EVER in human history, but, hey, what's a little thing like that got to do with making sure women suffer? Even in the Middle Ages when the catholic church basically ran everyone's life, people had sex outside of marriage. Awful lot of "bastards" in that period of history, in case no one noticed.]

Ms. Klepacki's group opposes mandating Gardasil vaccinations. States and school districts have the power to decide whether to mandate vaccinations, but such decisions are usually not made until at least a year after a vaccine is introduced.

In a news conference, the federal panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the panel's approval of Gardasil historic and 'a breakthrough for women's health.'

You know, the fundies have basically opposed every single breakthrough for women's health that there's ever been. They opposed the use of pain-killing drugs during childbirth on the grounds that women were supposed, according to their bible, to "bring forth their children in pain." Queen Victoria finally put an end to that bullshit by having anasthesia during the birth of one of her children.

Well Ms. Klepacki and her ilk lost round one on this. Expect them to beat the shit out of local school boards in the coming years trying to make sure that they don't do the right thing and mandate this vaccine along with measles, mumps, and rubella.