Blood on their hands

Abstinence groups continue to oppose the HPV vaccine...even with new evidence that HPV infection is linked not only with cervical cancer, but lung cancer as well. (ABC News)

Their objections continue to blow my mind.

"We don't need to be vaccinating children against something that can be prevented with a behavior change," said Kimberly Martinez, executive director of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a nonprofit group that advocates teaching children not to have sex rather than to have safe sex.

"We have to teach kids values and boundaries," she said. "If you give kids the vaccine, you're giving them a license to go have sex. It's like if you teach a kid to use a condom, you know what they're going to do with it," she said.

Listen, lady, if threats like unwanted pregnancy, AIDS, and the many other STDs with very nasty symptoms aren't stopping your kids from having unprotected sex...I seriously doubt the future risk of cervical cancer is going to stop them. Assuming they even learned what a cervix is or that they have one in their abstinence-based sex ed curriculum. What a bogus argument.

Not to mention the valid and often-repeated counterargument: even if you could ensure your kid never had sex before marriage, you couldn't ensure the same regarding his or her spouse.

Maybe these folks also oppose teens wearing seatbelts on the grounds that they encourage speeding and unsafe driving.