Plan B is the simplest birth control pill there is -- it's a morning after pill for women. One pill, taken the morning after sexual intercourse, prevents pregnancy. Indeed, the pill's simplicity is what's made it a target.
That's why eyebrows were raised when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the odd case that the pill was too complicated to understand by young women and overruled her FDA commissioner, who wanted to make Plan B available over-the-counter to all women based on available scientific evidence.
Specifically, the Secretary said that there was insufficient evidence that younger women can understand the label and use the product appropriately. Again, the labeling and appropriate use of Plan B is exceedingly simple.
Something else must be at play here.
What seems to be at play is presidential politics. Did Sebelius -- a courageous fighter for women's reproductive rights as governor of Kansas -- find a way to delay the Plan B decision until after 2012?
If politics is indeed the reason for Secretary Sebelius' decision, it is a stunning betrayal of President Obama's campaign commitments to reverse the Bush administration's persistent indifference to science and data when it comes to women's health.
Even worse, it raises the prospect that science will be sacrificed to politics in other areas as well, and that other contraception issues will be resolved with similar disregard for women's health.
In fact, we will find out very soon.
The Affordable Care Act guarantees access to important preventive health services without expensive co-pays, including contraception for women.
But, if this administration is afraid of offending anti-women's health forces, thousands of employers will be allowed to refuse to cover contraceptives in their employer-sponsored health plans. Such a move would directly interfere with the individual health needs of millions of women by limiting the type of care they can get.
Last year, my organization issued a report that found, among other things, that access to contraception is a basic medical standard of care -- or protocol that doctors follow -- in a wide range of medical conditions and situations, including heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy, lupus, obesity, and cancer. Unintended pregnancy can be dangerous -- even deadly -- for some women with medical conditions such as these.
A woman should not have to choose between her job and her birth control. She must be allowed to make decisions about whether or not to have a child based on her own beliefs, not the beliefs of her employer. Let us hope that Secretary Sebelius sides with science.
Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup
David Katz, M.D.: How About Plan 'D, For Data' For Plan B?
1. A morning after pill over the counter means that doctors don't get a cut when a woman makes a mistake.
2. The morning after pill will cut into the massive profits of the abortion mills.
3. Finally, the morning after pill will dry up the source of embryonic stem cells for research.
It's not about morality. It's not about safety. IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY!!!!!
2. There is no such thing as an "abortion mill". Abortion providers do not make massive profits from abortion. This is an outright lie spread by the propagandists who in this one isolated case seem to think that money is evil, but refuse to let the government help out. When you restrict tax dollars from being used to defray the cost of abortion, a patient will have to pay out of pocket, this does not, and has not been shown to bring in "massive profits" to a non-profit organization.
3. This point seems also to be based on the same lunatic propaganda the rest of your amusingly incorrect statements were. It's just too ridiculous to address.
It's immoral to restrict this, it's unsafe to restrict this from minors, and it's about the POLITICS.
This is not a "right" decision, it's short sighted one, and a poor one politically. The group that would be appeased by this is not the one that would be voting for Obama anyway, and he's gone back on his word to base his decisions on science and facts and not politics.
However, her health and life WOULD be at risk if she became pregnant. You're basically saying that if your relationship with your daughter doesn't allow that you and she have open, honest conversations about the fact that she's having sex, you'd prefer that she got pregnant as a result.
Do we want to protect young teen girls from child sex abuse? Or do we just want to hide this widespread pathology by giving young girls the means to cover up sex crimes made against them without any adult counsil?
If you object to the specific age limit of 17, and want to argue the relative merits of 15 vs 16 vs 17, that is another discussion. But girls 14 and under are not generally mature enough to handle this kind of situation alone.
Many girls don't have these people, and many of them are the calm, rational ones NOT freaking out. There aren't any adverse reactions according to the scientists who've researched it, the doctors who've advocated for it's OTC status. What is it that you think that an "older cousin" is going to do that the physicians don't know about?
Your reasoning doesn't make any sense.
Indeed. If you want more of something, mitigate the negative consequences. In this case, if you want more "tweens" having sex, make Plan B available with no age restrictions.
First, that it's undesirable for "tweens" to be having sex. I'm not convinced. As long as they're doing it with each other, rather than being exploited by adults or older children, and using protection, then I don't see the harm.
Second, it presumes that "tweens" are rational decision makers and will hold off having sex if they think pregnancy is a real possibility. Millennia of human history, as well as recent research into cognitive neurobiology of children and adults, has shown that this is emphatically not the case. Young teenagers' brains aren't fully developed. They don't weigh pros and cons of decisions the same way adults do.
The last thing to consider is that only a tiny minority of 11-13 year olds are actually engaging in sexual activity. The majority of sexual activity among teens these days commences between 14 - 17 years old. In effect, you're using an unusual case (that of "tweens") to represent the more typical case (that of teenagers) in order to fearmonger and scare people with the prospect of 11-year-olds having sex.
Unless you have been religiously brainwashed into thinking that all sex except procreative sex between a married man and woman is inherently immoral, there's no reason to be upset about making Plan B available to minor girls.
Okay. I don't think I need to read any further...
I feel like our government is constantly telling me that they can parent my children better than my husband or I can. So kids get to do whatever they feel like and we parents are only good for financially supplementing their lifestyles and should keep our noses out of their business. Forget that we have invested our hearts and souls into them because we love them so much.
Our children are the most precious things in our lives to my husband and I. We are raising them to let them go one day. They must live their lives and learn from their mistakes just as we all do. But if one of my girls is having sex and is afraid she may become pregnant, then we need to know about this and use it as an opportunity for a very important dialogue, not merely just popping a pill to do away with only one possible consequence. I don't want my right as a parent and this chance for a very important conversation stripped from me.
You KNOW there are many teenage girls out there with abusive, intolerant parents. Girls who don't talk to their parents because their parents are strung out on drugs or alcohol and can't help anyway. Girls who don't talk to their parents because they are afraid of being beaten again. Girls who don't talk to their parents because they will be disowned and thrown out on the street if they reveal they've been having sex.
You want to tell those girls, "Sorry, but I'm too upset about the idea that my daughter might be keeping secrets from me. YOU all have to have your lives ruined by a totally unnecessary, unwanted pregnancy, because MY need to feel like a Good Parent is more important than your actual physical health."
That's mighty Christian of you, as they say.
That's the outcome you're pushing for. Are you too attached to your emotional reaction to step back and take a rational look at the actual outcomes of the policies you support? Or do you just not care that your insistence on writing your particular brand of sexual morality into American law will ruin a few thousand teenage girls' lives?
Over use of the morning after pill messes up your cycles and cause heavy untimely bleeding.
A condom: $1.50
A month of contraception of 'the pill' - $30
Now, which do you think is going to be used as contraception?
health care in US is expensive. The place where I stay it is $2.50