FRC: OBJECTIVELY PRO-CANCER

Jeanne D'Arc notes that our friends at the Family Research Council have found a new scourge to rally against: a potential vaccine for HPV.

"Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.

The women I know have. And what they'll tell you is that HPV, or human papilloma virus, is the most common cause of cervical cancer which, of course, can be rather fatal.

Thus, what we have here is that the FRC would rather see women die of cancer than have access to a medical vaccine. All in the name of puritan demagoguery.

When major progress is made on the AIDS vaccine, you can bet they will be there protesting it as well.

UPDATE: Ezra adds:

Bush likes to conceal his stance on abortion through the inegnious "culture of life" formulation. But these people don't really want a culture of life. Their overriding objective is not protecting women from AIDS and HPV and cervical cancer and potentially deadly childbirth (as in partial-birth abortions) and other potential killers, it's stopping them for having premarital sex. And if a few -- hell, if a lot! -- have to die to make that future manifest, then so be it. So next time you hear someone spout off about the "culture of life", don't be fooled -- this is a culture of puritanism and subjugation, nothing more, nothing less. A culture of life, you can tell them, doesn't kill.

Word.