Since it is against the law to have sex with anyone under the age of 18, one has to wonder why Assemblyman Ed Hernandez, D-Baldwin Park, and those of like mind who favor a mandatory vaccination against a sexually transmitted disease — human papillomavirus, or HPV — have set the age at a tender 9 years old. Is this not being complicit in crimes of a sexual nature? You bet it is.

Proposition 85 sold out our young women by making it legal to keep an underage abortion a secret, thus enabling statutory rape. Now they want to avoid evidence of sexual abuse of children as young as 9 years old. This is not only depraved but against our own laws to protect our most vulnerable young women.

It is indeed a good thing to protect against HPV. But the vaccination of underage children does not protect them from the very real and very destructive sexual abuse that seems to be of absolutely no concern to Hernandez and those of like mind. If you must mandate this vaccination, the age should be 18, the legal age of consent.

If you want to protect young women as young as 9, enforce the laws already on the books against sexual abuse of a minor.

— Dorothy Hage, Newbury Park