This is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a long time, but it’s kind of a sensitive topic.
Back in high school health class, I remember hearing about an early version of a vaccine for HPV. Not much was really said about it, and it wasn’t until I was well out of high school that the HPV vaccine was actively encouraged, but the knowledge that it existed was always with me.
To the great shame of the evangelical community, this vaccination was actually contentious when it first came out. Why? Because people feared it would encourage promiscuity. After all, since HPV was sexually transmitted, one less risk from premarital sex was sure to encourage it, right?
First of all, I think this is absolutely terrible reasoning, and it highlights the stupid kinds of hills that so many evangelicals are willing to die on. The entire message of Christianity is forgiveness and redemption, and the only thing some people could think about was how a vaccine that otherwise saves lives could potentially encourage “bad behavior”. They would rather a 40 year old mother die from cervical cancer than for two high school students to do things in the back of a van, because sex = bad. Priorities.
There was a period of time between high school and a few years after college in which I had small warts on my feet. These are apparently pretty common, but they were also absolutely disgusting to me, and home treatments never seemed to work. It took years of trying off and on to remove them before I finally experienced success after killing one particularly irksome wart, and after that, the others fell in rapid succession. It was huge relief. They’ve never returned. The virus that causes warts on the feet and hands is a related, but also quite different version of the HPV virus that causes warts on the genitals, but I remember thinking to myself, “These are disgusting on my feet, imagine how disgusting they would be on the business”, and that was when I resolved to get the HPV vaccine, because that’s basically how you prevent yourself from ever getting warts on the business.
And you have to realize, I believe very strongly in Christian sexual ethics. I believe that sex was meant for a committed covenant relationship. At the same time, the world doesn’t always represent this ideal. Life is messy. People are messy. Some people come to faith later in life. Some people are Christians very early in life, but they make mistakes. Some people experience abuse, or rape, some are simply pressured too far. Some simply let their own desires control them. Sometimes spouses cheat, too. You can’t control that sort of thing.
In the midst of hoping to be married someday, I realized that there’s a very real chance my future wife might have been through any of those circumstances. And some people have HPV and don’t even know it.
So while my primary motivation was to make sure my man parts were never visited by dreadful warts, the other side was simply a commitment to decrease the suffering in the world. Sure, I don’t believe premarital/extramarital sex is a good thing, but, again, if I had to pick between those rare cases where a 40 year old mother dies from a mistake she made when she was 16 or more people having sex, I’m going to choose the forgiveness option and let people make their own choices. [This is what it should mean to be pro-life]
So yeah, in my mid-late 20s, I was vaccinated against HPV, and I’m proud that I was. It cost me a bit, I think around $600 (first shot was wrapped up in the cost of a physical. my doctor’s office at the time was pretty cool and told about that neat little trick). And yeah. I think people should seriously consider doing so as well.