The Washington Post had an article today about how schools in D.C. and Virginia are "requiring" girls entering 6th grade to receive the HPV vaccine (Gardasil) There is an opt-out: In Virginia, you can just not get the shot, but in D.C. parents must fill out a form.
But of course, "opt-out" has already been lost on some. A quote from the article:
"It wasn't really a choice," Haggans said while waiting in line at Kelly Miller Middle School during one of the District's free immunization clinics Thursday. Lanise received her second of three doses of the HPV vaccine at the clinic. "The school said she needed it, so I got her it," Haggans said.
So even though it isn't actually required, some parents will still think it is, or simply go along with it, and get the three shots -- kaching! that's another $375 in Merck's pocket!
Well, my daughters will not be getting the HPV vaccine, even though I am a big advocate of vaccines -- for easily communicable diseases. My daughters don't need a shot for something that is sexually transmitted.
I believe that there should be some mandates to protect the public at large -- but only for diseases that can be spread by casual contact and are potentially deadly. The government has no right to require protection from something you can only catch from sexual contact, potentially risking a bad reaction which has included paralysis and some deaths that can't be explained.
Jessica Varga of Nevada became paralyzed hours after receiving a dose of Gardasil.
I'm not so worried that my daughters will become promiscuous if they get this shot. Whereas, I think young women do avoid sex for fear of getting pregnant and some for fear of getting AIDS, I can't imagine too many are thinking about other sexually transmitted diseases or cancer when they're deciding whether or not to have sex.
But I do take exception to the notion that our schools and our government are assuming that young girls will inevitably become sexually active so soon that they feel that girls as young as nine need this shot. Even entering sixth grade these girls aren't even twelve -- and they're already being set up to have sex at a young age?
These proponents of Gardasil actually think they are empowering young women to take control of their sexual health. Not from where I stand.
My daughters will be truly empowered. They will be taught that it's best not to have sex until marriage, and all the reasons why. They will unequivocally believe that their sexuality is so special it is not to be trifled with, that no boy should ever be allowed to attack their self-esteem or trick them to think otherwise. A truly empowered young woman would never have sex unless under the best of conditions, practically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, etc etc -- and not before they're at least eighteen.
If they do decide otherwise -- after they're out of high school, in a long-term monogamous relationship with someone whose health history they are fully aware of, and after full discussion and consideration of possible repercussions -- I will have taught them that they should be examined by a doctor first, and then they can make any health care decisions for themselves. (They will also be encouraged not to use an abortifacient to prevent pregnancy, and they will base their decision knowing that sooner or later they will get pregnant... but that's another blog post.)
What's really going on here is the bigger agenda of sex without consequences. Gardasil, birth control, abortion -- all being shoved down the throats of young women while trying to convince them they are "taking control of their sexuality." Sounds more like certain sexually liberal advocates are trying to convince everyone -- most importantly themselves -- that recreational behavior that can damage you both body and soul, and potentially can create another human being, can be alright if you simply get shots, pop pills, and undergo "procedures."
I'm not buying it -- and neither will my daughters.
Gardasil can also vaccinate men, though it has not yet been approved by the FDA to be marketed as such. Isn't it interesting that once again the responsibility of preventing sexual consequences is placed on young women? Why don't radical feminists have a problem with this, like traditional feminists do?
Update: Apparently the FDA has now approved Gardasil for males, as of October 16, 2009. So when will liberal groups push for young men to get vaccinated? Doesn't matter, my son will not be participating either...
What ever happened to young women getting married to a childhood friend?
Not that I think that the standard of romantic love--I'm very much enamored of...well, a very different pattern---but realistically speaking the vast bulk of happy marriages in history were between children of families which had quite close ties of immediate history in a stable setting.
What has happened to America, that nobody thinks anything of the virtue of being sufficiently humble and steadfast to live with the same neighbors for a couple of decades, so that your children have a chance to grow up knowing everyone living around them? When did "the kind of place you'd like to raise a family" become a sneer against a local community?
I know...the fantasy that there is some destined person you just haven't met is very appealing. It's also inherently more fraught with dramatic conflict and narrative possibilities. So it's only natural that such stories are disproportionately popular and current. But that's always been true.
Everybody wants to live in a fantasy, that's why fantasies are so popular (or maybe that's just me, some people claim to enjoy fantasies they wouldn't like in reality). But the mark of a mature, sane individual is the ability to deal with reality as it is, regardless of what one might wish it to be (or what one needs to believe it to be in order to justify some perverse idiosyncrasy).
Whereas a general dearth of such individuals is the mark of a society on the brink of destruction.
Posted by: ChunLing | August 23, 2009 at 01:49 PM
I am often appalled but no longer surprised at government, the media, hollywood, feminists, and so called higher education always pushing girls to go further, faster and with far less thought. Statistics are often twisted or out right lied about to promote a liberalized sexual agenda. I do believe it is designed to help those who have not been responsible and wise to give themselves and excuse, just like telling young men they can't help themselves and it's only natural has led to far too many men thinking that they have no self control and should not bother trying.
I have somehow managed to raise three girls who never had sex before marriage nor have any of their circle of friends. In fact most of the people we know have managed to miraculously raise their kids without most of them having sex until adulthood. WHile just across the river from me in an area of CA known for it's new age openness, drug use, and promiscuity far exceeds the natural average for teen pregnancy, drug abuse, cheating in school and business is all the norm. They think how they live is the same for everyone else.
The much more conservative religious middle class neighborhoods where I live, which are not without problems but have much greater numbers of kids going through school without drug busts, DUI, teen pregnancies. But then again we don't hear about their parents going to jail for fraud, or being part of finical scandals like Enron. Perhaps there is something to be said for traditional families, honesty, hard work, belief in God, personal integrity etc.
Posted by: michael m | August 24, 2009 at 10:00 AM
Kudos to you, Michael M, for raising girls who respected themselves enough to wait. That's no small feat today. But too often, the gov't, media, Hollywood, feminists, etc. are blamed for society's collective shortcomings. The problem with placing the blame there is that, in turn, you concede that these institutions have more clout in your children's lives than you. I don't believe that's the case for any good parent, you included. You touched on this in your last paragraph, when you discussed the different parenting styles (to put it mildly) between you and your neighbors and those "across the river."
Had any one of your girls gotten pregnant young, who would have been to blame? You might have blamed her for her poor decision-making, and she might have blamed herself. Your neighbors probably would have blamed your parenting, rightly or wrongly. But NO ONE would have said, "Poor girl. Look how society has turned her into a teenage, unwed mother."
I find it confusing how Conservatives believe in bootstrapping on so many levels but are quick to blame liberals in this respect.
Posted by: Pat | August 24, 2009 at 12:31 PM
Great point, Michael, and congratulations on raising your family with strong moral values. The problem with the arguments from both Collette and Pat is that they've both injected political blame. Collette, you started out with a great piece here, then end with a poke at "liberal advocates" being the cause of destructive sexual behavior. Pat, I'm sure your final comment was a push-back, something I've seen you do frequently on this blog with a fair amount of disdane in your tone. But here neither argument for blame holds weight. It doesn't come down to a liberal or conservative blame game, it comes down to how we, as parents, raise our kids and decide what we will or will not allow to filter into our lives and that of our families. I think there are very few adults who buy into the argument that a pill or needle will cure poor sexual decisions, as is pointed out in Collette's final argument. And I'm quite confident that those that do buy into it would be from both political sides, if it even made a bit of sense to divide it up that way. The conservative and liberal pigeon holing you two are constantly pushing is foolish.
Posted by: jessica johnson | August 24, 2009 at 12:58 PM
Thank you, Jessica. You're right, my point was apparently diminished by my pointed political comment.
But I feel that I was also making the point that you made, also, and that was that parents should be the weightier influence in a child's life, not society at large.
Posted by: Pat | August 24, 2009 at 01:53 PM
I have always said that parents *should* be the weightier influence, and it would be nice to believe that they often are.
I don't have facts and figures at hand, but my point isn't whether or not parents are the major influence, my point is how liberals, Hollywood, advertisers, etc make that job *that much harder* for *all* parents.
They perpetuate an oversexualization in our society, & unfortunately I think it's generally accepted that they set the standards for what "average" parents and their kids are *supposed* to view as the norm, but conservatives do *not* accept these premises.
Whether it's health care policies that treat girls as adults when it comes to "reproductive services" -- but nothing else-- or movies and tv shows that depict teenagers as sexually active like it's no big deal -- songs on the radio that sing about hooking up -- or ads that have what looks like teens half-naked...
All these add up to a pervasive atmosphere that conservative parents have to fight against every day.
Sure we have options, and I try to steer my girls away from what I disapprove of, but I can't be with them every second. With such a barrage from so many outlets -- well, sometimes stuff gets thru my filter, and it makes the battle to maintain my family's values much more difficult.
Jessica -- all I need to point to as one example is the latest ads for "Plan B" -- talk about "curing" bad decisions with a pill -- there it is!
As for any pigeon-holing -- yes, I can be guilty of shorthand. I guess I think it gets tiresome to write over and over again "well, of course I'm not talking about *every* liberal or *every* democrat and I'm just talking about certain trends ot tendencies or whatever and I'm not condemning *everyone*" (I'll even grant Pat the same excuse...)
That would get a bit tedious -- but I do recognize your point. But aren't you and Pat equally guilty of saying that I'm "blaming" someone else, when what I'm saying is that they are doing a crappy job of setting social norms, and the results of that can be seen in too many families *un*like mine and Michael's?
Yep, unwed/very young parenting happens in all families -- I was 22, but unwed. Why did it happen? Because I abandoned the values I had been raised with and bought into the whole "sexuality = maturity/coolness/free expression/physical empowerment/whatever" garbage. When it happens to someone at that age, it's hard enough -- having it happen to someone under 18? Tragic.
We -- no, liberals/Hollywood/advertisers -- can do better for young kids.
Posted by: Colette Moran | August 24, 2009 at 07:01 PM
You know...I really do have trouble seeing Pat's side of the argument.
Pat writes:
But NO ONE would have said, "Poor girl. Look how society has turned her into a teenage, unwed mother."
Huh? Of course someone would have said that. A lot of people would have said it (I think I've said almost exactly that myself about certain situations). Or are you making the point that the reason Michael was able to succeed in raising his daughters to respect themselves was because he and his community would not be those saying it? Which would seem to run completely contrary to your entire argument at every level.
JJ acting like "conservative" vs "liberal" values have nothing to do with whether or not parents can raise their children to be chaste...when whether or not that's even socially desirable is one of the basic points of contention between liberals and conservatives. Or am I missing something here? I do know that honesty is another of the values on which liberals have a fundamentally different view...but if you're not even going to try and make sense, what's the point of bothering to lie?
Could someone explain to me what is even going on here?
Posted by: ChunLing | August 25, 2009 at 07:50 AM
Ahh, ChunLing. Feeling left out?
Maybe if one of your rants didn't read like it's some kind of intergalactic communication from the mothership, you wouldn't have to accuse another commentor of lying in order to get a response.
Posted by: Pat | August 25, 2009 at 09:22 AM
ChungLing, I'm finding it hard to follow any point you're trying to make, on this topic and in most others you've written here. Are you insinuating that my opinion was a lie? Surely, I misunderstood.
I think we're all (that is, Pat, Collette, and I) on the same page...in a way. The point I was trying to make is that issues such as sex and birth control are personal, familial, and social issues, not political ones. We all love our families, and the personal decisions we make in these specific matters are not swayed by politics. If I'm a republican, do I consider what my republican representatives think about sex before having "the talk" with my daughter, or whether or not I allow her to be injected with Gardasil? Hell no! I'm guessing that none of us would. For that reason, why make such a great argument regarding whether or not these things belong in school and the statement it makes on where we are as a society, then place political blame?
Look, I'm not so naive as to think that pharmaceutical companies don't allow legislators into their deep pockets. But I'll bet the farm that these companies are politically unbiased, they have always wanted to reach as far as they can and hold sway with whoever will listen - and republicans, democrats, and independents are listening. With pharmaceutical lobbyists on both sides of the aisle (as cliche as that term is now), why bother pointing the finger at one without turning it to the others?
How much control they have in our homes is only determined by how much control we give them.
Collette, regarding your final comment in your response to me: "We -- no, liberals/Hollywood/advertisers -- can do better for young kids." Again, since you've entered politics into your argument, did you inadvertantly leave out conservatives and independents, or are their hands clean on this issue? Can they not do better, too?
Posted by: jessica johnson | August 25, 2009 at 09:51 AM
Pat, your comments can be pointed - okay, mean-spirited - from time to time, but that last comment was hilarious!
Posted by: jessica johnson | August 25, 2009 at 09:53 AM
But, when choosing a political affiliation, surely you consider how your support for certain public figures and their "private" behavior is going to impact what you teach your children, right?
It's the same thing with what media influences you choose to support and enjoy. What sort of person would claim to be trying to teach their children that extra-marital sex is wrong while being a vocal champion of public figures who demonstrate the exact opposite? Republicans, for all their failings, kick their politicians out of office when they see them as bad examples to their children.
I can't help but think that Democrats do the same, but they just have different standards of what constitutes a bad example. Because, much as they like to deny it, they have different standards for what they want their children to learn.
But I thought the whole point of the sixties and seventies was that we didn't have to lie about that stuff anymore...oh, right. Thank you again, President Clinton, for making lying about sexual mores the duty of every liberal. We were on the verge of everyone getting over it and just admitting what they really thought about sex, but nooooooo!
Posted by: ChunLing | August 25, 2009 at 11:11 PM