If Republican presidential candidates want to debate sexual health and hygiene, it would be nice if they displayed more collective knowledge and judgment than your average eighth-grade family life class. During the Tampa debate, one longed for a blunt, part-time football coach -- or whomever they draft into teaching health classes nowadays -- to mount the stage and present the facts of life.
The human papillomavirus (HPV) is a nasty sexually transmitted disease contracted by about three-quarters of Americans at some point. You can have it, and spread it, without knowing it. In some women, the virus causes abnormal cells in the lining of the cervix that can develop into cancerous lesions. Virtually all cervical cancer is caused by HPV.
There is, however, a vaccine that is highly effective against the most dangerous HPV strains. Its main side effect -- as you'd expect when sticking a needle into a preteen girl -- is fainting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all girls should get it anyway.
At least this approach would have added to the public stock of health information. Instead, Michele Bachmann talked of "innocent little 12-year-old girls" who were "forced to have a government injection" by Rick Perry's 2007 mandate of HPV vaccinations in Texas.
Bachmann later added, on the medical authority of a weeping anecdote, that the HPV vaccine, or maybe it was some other vaccine, might cause "mental retardation." Bachmann herself seems prone to a serious condition: the compulsive desire to confirm every evangelical stereotype of censorious ignorance.
The objections to routine HPV vaccination cluster in a few areas. First, it is alleged that removing medical penalties for sexual contact -- in this case, HPV and cervical cancer -- will encourage sex. A protective shot given to a girl on the verge of sexual maturity, in this view, may be taken as permission for experimentation.
This type of argument is inherently difficult to prove or disprove. But it is unlikely that a 16-year-old making sexual choices is focused on her chances of getting a cancer that might develop 20 years in the future -- a hypothetical event beyond the time horizon of the adolescent mind.
The more disturbing moral failure concerns any parent who would entertain this argument.