Enjoy your cancer, slut!

Another good read on the HPV vaccine that you and I may be denied, disgraceful tramps that we are. In Virginity or Death!, Katha Pollitt points out that the underlying logic of the war on reproductive rights boils down to a simple choice: virginity or death. In so doing, she nicely exposes some of the false rhetoric of the right (which is of course our bread and butter):

Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they've probably never heard of.

Check it out, and make sure to watch for the zingers:

I remember when people rolled their eyeballs if you suggested that opposition to abortion was less about "life" than about sex, especially sex for women. You have to admit that thesis is looking pretty solid these days. No matter what the consequences of sex--pregnancy, disease, death--abstinence for singles is the only answer. Just as it's better for gays to get AIDS than use condoms, it's better for a woman to get cancer than have sex before marriage. It's honor killing on the installment plan.

You don't get much more pithy than that!