As a follow-up from Maya’s post yesterday and for #HPVDay today, this is a guest post by Bryce Covert, a writer and editor who works on feminism, economic equality, and progressive politics. You can find her work here.

I was 24 when I found out that my health insurance would cover the full cost of getting three shots of Gardasil, the newly released HPV vaccine. I signed up immediately — but I was already too late.

I started a monogamous relationship with a boy who thought he was clean of STDs in January of 2008. In March, I had my third and final Gardasil shot. By June we had broken up, and it wasn’t ...