Why I’m Vaccinating my Frum Daughter for HPV by Anonymous

My dad works in cancer research at Georgetown University Medical Center and one of his colleagues there helped develop the groundbreaking vaccine for HPV (the Human Papillomavirus) which is the main cause of cervical as well as other kinds of cancer. This vaccine has the potential to save the lives of over 150,000 people every year and has no known significant side effects. Recently the Israeli Ministry of Health mandated that starting this year all 8th grade girls will have the option to receive the HPV vaccine in their schools. However, this vaccination has been met with quite a bit of resistance in the religious community since HPV is sexually transmitted.

I have a daughter in 8th grade, and in order to honor her saba who devotes his life to saving lives from cancer, she is definitely getting the vaccine when it will be administered by the school nurse. Another reason my daughter will be getting the vaccine is in the merit of my friend, an amazing JewishMOM, whom I saw wither away and endure horrific suffering before she, like 275,000 women each year across the world, lost her own battle with cervical cancer. But from what I hear from my daughter, most of her classmates will not be receiving the vaccine. “Frum girls don’t get sexually transmitted diseases!” the vaccine’s opponents contend. “And even if some frum girls do, MY daughter won’t!”

I guess I’m not the only person thinking about the HPV Vaccination controversy, since this week I received the following anonymous letter from a mother who will also be vaccinating her daughters against HPV:

My husband was the first boy I dated, B”H. I was 19 and he was 23 when we got married. When we met, my husband was learning in a yeshiva in Yerushalayim and working towards getting smicha and I had just finished seminary.

My husband I come from very similar backgrounds, both of us grew up Modern Orthodox and then became more yeshivish, and we clicked pretty much instantly.

Around our 4th date, my husband-to-be mentioned something that I found really embarrassing. He told me that he had not always been so frum and that during university he’d had a one-time sexual encounter at his fraternity and had contracted a genital wart. It seemed so inappropriate that he was telling me that, and I just ignored it and said something like, “Oh…that’s too bad.” He said that he had been to the doctor, and everything was fine now and that it posed no danger to the woman he would marry. I didn’t know what he was referring to. But I guessed that he had looked into things, and it was nothing to worry about.

B”H, we got married a few months after that. A few years later we were back in America, living in the out-of-town community where my husband works as a shul rabbi. By then we had five children, and it had been years since I’d thought of my husband’s embarrassing confession during that fourth date. But then my husband brought it up again. He had read something about new research on genital warts, and suggested that his genital wart from so many years before was something I might want to mention to my gynecologist.

Again, I didn’t know why he seemed so concerned. But the next time I saw my gynecologist, I mentioned it to her, and she said I should be tested for HPV.

I didn’t even know what HPV was. Only later I found out that HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection. So, to make a long story short, I did the test, and I tested positive for HPV. I, the girl who frummed out and had never even touched my husband before our wedding night, have a sexually transmitted disease. It’s so surreal and weird.

And the scariest thing is that this virus puts me at risk for several kinds of cancer and precancer. My doctor begged me: “Please, do not be angry at your husband!” B”H, I’ve been blessed with a wonderful husband and I love and respect him so much. But it’s not easy to know that I’m at risk because of him.

I just wanted to share my story since I know that most religious mothers think their daughters don’t need to be vaccinated for HPV. But I will definitely be vaccinating my three daughters for HPV, because even a woman who is a virgin on her wedding night is at risk. I’m living proof.