My wife and I were in the car when the radio announced the news, and we were impressed. After all, her side of the family has suffered from that terrible form of cancer. A vaccine had been proven 100% effective in preventing the spread of the sexually transmitted virus (HPV) responsible for 70% of cervical cancer cases. Better yet, the FDA had approved the vaccine for girls and women ages 9-26.

But then it dawned on me. The word “sexually” appearing anywhere in the neighborhood of the words “nine-year-old girls” will surely light a fire. Sure enough, when Colorado state legislators introduced a bill that would require middle school girls to receive the vaccine—unless their parents or guardians wanted otherwise—the voices of dogmatic dissent registered their stern disapproval. Testifying before Colorado’s state senators, Ed Hanks from Colorado Right to Life said that, instead, the state should encourage abstinence. Others have asserted that surely the vaccine will lead to sexual promiscuity. Colorado Springs’ Focus on the Family (my favorite source for articulate inanity) has opposed the legislation.

I’m reminded of the age-old conundrum, the confusion of correlation with causation. Fact: when ice cream sales increase, so does the incidence of rape. If you confuse correlation with cause, you overlook the fact that both ice cream sales and rape climb in warmer weather, and you make silly suggestions like let’s ban ice cream to keep women safe.

Of course that’s absurd, but sadly, influential people in our society base their arguments on such twisted logic. Cooler minds need to respond with truth, such as, the distribution of clean needles does not cause drug abuse, but it does reduce the spread of HIV. The availability of condoms does not cause people to have more sex, but it does cause people to have less unprotected sex and thereby it saves lives. Early and thorough sex education does not cause youth to have more sex. To the contrary, fact-based studies have proven the wisdom of good sex education. “Ignorance is not bliss… Children who know more [about sex] are far less likely to engage in early sexual activity,” said Jocelyn Elders, former US Surgeon General.

But what about abstinence? When it comes to just saying no, what do we know about correlation and causation? Let’s stick to the facts. Virginity pledges, or abstinence pledges, have gained popularity recently. Subjectively speaking, parents must love the sound of it, and teenagers must love the fact that their parents love the sound of it.

Objectively speaking, not only don’t they work, virginity pledges can make things worse. A peer-reviewed (that’s the good kind) study by sociologists Bearman and Brueckner of Columbia and Yale, respectively, looked at virginity pledgers 5 years after their pledge, and found similar proportions of sexually transmitted diseases among pledgers as non-pledgers. More troubling, pledgers engaged in more sexually dangerous behaviors, such as unprotected sex, versus the other group.

News flash: people have sex. That includes the old, young, left, right, virtuous and despicable among us. Ninety-five percent of people interviewed for a non-partisan 2002 study had engaged in premarital sex (email me for a list of all references). As for you watchdogs of acceptable moral behavior, 19 out of 20 of you also jumped the marriage starting gun.

Given that fact, let’s put an end to this deadly denial. The very best way that we can help our young people leave the nest at age 18 healthy and safe is to talk to them, support them, educate them, and when the science makes sense—like it does now—vaccinate them.