Beyond Gardasil: The Religious Right’s Attack on Reproductive Health Science

(Source: Jan Christian; www.ambrotosphotography.com)

Everyone is talking about Gardasil, the HPV vaccine made by Merck. It’s “incredibly safe by any measure,” observes the top vaccine blogger Orac. The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees. But the Christian Right has been objecting to this vaccine for a long time–that’s not exactly news.

I like to take a big picture view, and what’s interesting is how closely attacks on this vaccine dovetail with other Christian right myths related to reproductive health, sexuality, and abortion. I chronicled some of these in my book The Republican War on Science, and there are many others:

The claim that having an abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer. (False)

The claim that having an abortion increases her risk of mental disorders. (False)

The exaggeration of condom failure rates.

The exaggeration of abstinence-education success rates, coupled with unjust attacks on successful comprehensive sex-ed programs.

The claim that there was something mysteriously wrong with the safety testing of the morning-after pill. (Bogus.)

The claim that fetuses can feel pain around 20 weeks of gestation. (False.)

The assertion that same sex parenting is bad for kids. (False.)

The claim that adult stem cells can supplant embryonic ones for research purposes. (False)

And on and on. Eight bogus claims down, and we didn’t even mention evolution.

What’s going on here? What do all these have in common with the others?

Simple: The Christian Right is in the constant (and very involved) business of constructing an alternative reality. It is trying to live in a world in which the laws of nature reflect a particularly conservative interpretation of what God says is morally right. It thinks the “facts” should support this—in fact, that they must support this.

Trouble is, they don’t. But these claims will be endlessly generated, and endlessly clung to—and “data” will be endlessly generated to give them a thin veneer of credibility. Why?

Well, that is a very big question, but the answer begins here.

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