With over 100 types of the Human Papilloma Virus, some of which contribute to most cervical cancer cases in North America, one can’t look too disapprovingly on a new vaccine that’s being called a “virtually 100 per cent effective” method of preventing its spread.

Alas, about a third of the known HPV strains are sexually-transmitted, and that’s why the Christian right, while acknowledging HPV as a potential killer, is fighting to stop the U.S. Center for Disease Control from making the HPV vaccine mandatory for pre-pubescent girls.

The concerns, held by such far-right staples as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Center, are that the vaccination will give teens a green light to fuck with reckless abandon. Merck, one of the companies developing the vaccine, says there’s no evidence to indicate it will lead to increased promiscuity.

The FRC issued a statement explaining that “it remains clear that practising abstinence until marriage and fidelity within marriage” are the only real ways to prevent HPV.

Of 14, 000 U.S. women diagnosed annually with cervical cancer, over a third will die of it.

» Scott Saxon