Anita Perry favored the HPV vaccine

NY Times:

Four years after Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order that would have made Texas the first state to require that sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease linked to cervical cancer, its genesis remains a mystery. Opponents, including Representative Michele Bachmann, suggest the governor was influenced by close ties to lobbyists for the vaccine maker, Merck, or donations from the drug company.

 One potential explanation that has received far less attention is the influence exerted on Mr. Perry by a close confidante with expertise in women’s health: his wife, Anita Thigpen Perry, a nurse, country doctor’s daughter, and career-long advocate for victims of sexual assault who has been a vocal proponent of immunizations.      

“She is a nurse first, first lady second,” said Michele Mosbacher, a prominent Republican fund-raiser and donor who became close to Mrs. Perry several years ago through her work for a statewide crisis center, the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. “She uses her role as a platform to heal.”

“Mrs. Perry is supportive of her husband,” Ms. Mosbacher continued, “but a quiet feminine force who, of course, speaks up in her family.”

Mr. and Mrs. Perry were high school sweethearts who have been married since November 1982. For his part, Mr. Perry has been clear about his wife’s influence in at least one important recent decision: getting into the presidential race in the first place. On Tuesday, she opened up her husband’s Iowa campaign headquarters in West Des Moines.

Speaking to reporters earlier this year, he said: “My wife was talking to me and saying: ‘Listen, get out of your comfort zone. Yeah, being governor of Texas is a great job, but sometimes you’re called to step into the fray.’ ”

And now, one of the first flash points to ignite since Mr. Perry entered the Republican nominating fight is over the question of whether to vaccinate preadolescent girls against HPV, or the human papillomavirus. The issue caught fire during a debate in Texas this month, when Mrs. Bachmann, of Minnesota, and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania attacked Mr. Perry, claiming that the decision to vaccinate children is best left to parents. Mr. Perry’s order was later overturned by state lawmakers.

The Perry campaign would not say what role, if any, Mrs. Perry, 59, played in her husband’s actions regarding the vaccine, but her passions on the issue of combating HPV are known. In a keynote address given at a women’s health summit meeting two years before Mr. Perry’s executive order, Mrs. Perry specifically focused her comments on HPV.

“There is no reason why knowledge about HPV and cervical cancer cannot be as common as information about childhood immunizations andmammograms,” she said, according to a transcript of the speech on the governor’s Web site. “We are fighting for the well-being of women all over the nation and setting a standard for cancer treatment that is unsurpassed. I am confident that through efforts like we’ve seen in Texas and the work at this conference, we will see the number of cervical cancer victims decrease.”
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Watching the recent debates, it is clear that Rick Perry was out of his comfort zone.   I favored the vaccine.  The opposition seemed emotional and in some cases irrational.  I a sure she thought the executive order was the right thing to do.  Politically, it could have been handled better, which Perry now admits.