HPV vaccine (reminded by pegkerr)

[mrissa]

pegkerr reminded me that I've been thinking about the HPV vaccine. The Strib ran an article Sunday talking about parents not wanting to get their daughters vaccinated, in case it gave them the idea that it was okay to have sex. This is just one of the articles I've read recently.

And I very quickly became very, very upset at this. What I said over at Peg's was: I was upset nearly to tears over the article in the Strib about this on Sunday. If it was doubts about the safety of the vaccine, I'd have to look at the data, but that's not what these people were saying. It boiled down to, "I wouldn't want to save my daughter's life if it meant she might have sex I disapproved of." Or even, "I wouldn't want to save my daughter's life if she was raped by the wrong person." I very quickly lose the ability to discuss this attitude rationally.

Seriously and in specific now that I have the article in front of me: Debra Blaschko, 47, of Mankato, is quoted as saying, "It's not that my kids can't make a mistake. But I want them to strive for the ideal." So to sum up: it's not that her kids can't make a mistake, it's that they should die if they do. Or if they marry someone who once made a sexual choice she wouldn't approve of. Or...etc. You can think of the situations yourself, I'm sure: all the ways in which the children -- the daughter, as men rarely get cervical cancer -- of Debra Blaschko, 47, of Mankato, could behave exactly as she instructed them and still benefit from this vaccine. And then there's the fact that no kid ever behaves exactly as their parents instructed them, because they are their own people with their own choices.

This is not what we call loving parenting.

At pegkerr's, I chose to use the icon with my dad in it, like I'm doing here, and went on to say: My dad was pretty traditionally daddy-protective when I started dating, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that protective behavior was -- is -- about my whole person and what he hoped would make me healthy and happy, not about control. I wish every kid could say the same. (The same is true of my mom, except that she wasn't the one who got dating-protective.)

Comments

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

This is not what we call loving parenting.

Amen.

I see the HPV Vaccine as being in the same category as putting sunscreen on your kid to reduce her skin cancer risk.

We're signing LMH up for it as soon as she's old enough to get it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Or having her wear a seatbelt.

"It's not that I don't think my kid could make any mistakes behind the wheel. I just don't want wearing a seatbelt to encourage her to think she can drive too fast or cut in front of other drivers. And if she did, I'd stand dry-eyed at her funeral and say, well, better a dead kid than a bad driver. Also I lack the imagination to come up with any traffic problems that wouldn't be directly the fault of my kid being bad."

See what I mean about getting upset about this?

(Standard disclaimers about the safety of the vaccine and its delivery medium do apply: if problems with the vaccine itself turn up, that's a different thing to be complaining about. That's like making sure the airbag will save rather than crushing your kid, instead of objecting to the idea of airbags.)