I’ve been thinking a lot about a comment I got on my earlier post about the governor of Texas deciding, unilaterally, to require all young girls to get vaccinated against HPV. A commenter calling herself “Womans Health Advocate” commented by explaining the health benefits (which, oddly, all seemed to center around the US saving money, which is an odd way of benefiting health, I think) and then informing me that sex was no longer taboo. She did a remarkable job of arguing against points I never made while managing to miss every single one of the points I actually mentioned.

Anyway, that’s not what I’ve been thinking about. Most articles about Rick Perry’s executive order that I’ve read (Dr. DeSoto’s commentary, which I quoted in the last post, was a notable exception, though it was focusing on the potential for a similar law here, not the Texas debacle) have mentioned that opponents “fear such a requirement would condone premarital sex and interfere with the way Texans raise their children.” (For example…) The implication here is that mandating this vaccine is opposed primarily by conservatives, who oppose it primarily on the grounds that it violates their moral code to act as though society simply accepts teenage sex as an inevitable fact of life.

From that, I am going to make something of a leap. I readily acknowledge that I do not have any concrete evidence to back this up, and that I am extrapolating more than I can prove. I conclude that a significant number of those people who support mandatory HPV vaccinations support the right of a woman to have an abortion if she chooses to do so. I am guessing that “Womans Health Advocate” falls into this group that supports both, but I cannot say for certain (and will make it clear that she does not fall into that group if she asks me to do so).

With that in mind, I have a question. How does one reconcile the belief that a woman has a right to choose whether or not she has an abortion (thus telling her that her right to choose what is done to her body is of utmost importance) with the belief that the government has the right to force a woman to get a vaccine (for a disease to which she could significantly reduce her chances of being exposed simply by choosing to exert discretion with respect to who she sleeps with*), when there are a large number of people who have significant concerns about the side effects?

Again, I may be wrong about whether “Womans Health Advocate” shares this cognitive dissonance, but where are the women’s rights advocates (such as NARAL) on this? Are there articles out there describing their massive efforts to have this overturned, or am I right that they are being conspicuously silent in supporting a woman’s right to choose in this matter?

* Yes, I know, you can’t ever be completely sure of your partners and their sexual history, but I’d think you can be mostly sure of them, which would at least help reduce your exposure.

Update: Since writing this (but before I posted it, as I was giving a few people, like “Womans Health Advocate” time to e-mail me back), I came across a link or two that implied that NARAL was not only not standing up for the right to choose in this case, they were actively opposing it. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the links, and I have not received any response to my e-mails to NARAL about this issue.