HPV Vaccine & the Christian Right

A pretty good backgrounder from HealthDay (Forbes uses their feed on their site) on the controversy of the HPV vaccine and why it sparks debate. And relatedly, an informed friend writes:

I have been following the HPV story for a while. The Conservative Movement has always been inordinately preoccupied with it. Christian conservatives talked about HPV much more than anyone else did long before the Merck vaccine. The reason is that HPV is a sexually transmitted disease against which a condom is almost no help. So they could say only abstinence truly protects you against sexually transmitted disease, which can lead to cervical cancer. That is one reason why they were ready to hate the Merck vaccine. HPV was such a good argument for abstinence, even though the main reason culturally conservatives favor abstinence is social/moral rather than medical.

For an example, here's an interesting article from an interesting evangelical news magazine...