Well, you guessed it. Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama will be making Plan B less accessible to teens. As he has banned all opportunities to have unprotected sex that are not immediately covered in your non-existent sex ed classes.
Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services upheld their decision to dispense Plan B One-Step—a one-pill emergency contraceptive—to young women only with a doctor's prescription, overruling an FDA request to make the drug available over the counter to women of all ages. The restriction only applies to women under the age of 17. In a statement on the HHS website, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius outlined the administration's reasoning:
The FDA's conclusion that the drug is safe, she says, did not contain sufficient data to show that people of all ages "can understand the label and use the product appropriately." The outliers, she says, are the 10 percent of girls who are physically capable of child-bearing at 11.1 years old, and "have significant cognitive and behavioral differences."
HHS makes no mention of women older than 11 and younger than 17—statistically, those far more likely to be having sex, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
But hey, maybe there's some people out there that do not think 11 year old girls should be having sex and they applaud this decision to remove any sort of safety net that would encourage such behavior.
Maybe it's just Obama's way of saying that Plan A is suppose to be abstinence. The other day when I heard about this I was yelling at NPR over it.
NPR did a "scientists say all these things, but on the other hand here is the view of a mother from kentucky" and this woman says "i oppose plan B because think girls should be more responsible in their, you know" (here she pauses for about 15 seconds) "leisure activities and not be in that situation in the first place" and I'm literally yelling out loud at my radio "YOU ARE TAKING AWAY THEIR ABILITY TO BE RESPONSIBLE YOU IGNORANT PIECE OF SHIT"
The part that really gets me is this:
The FDA's conclusion that the drug is safe, she says, did not contain sufficient data to show that people of all ages "can understand the label and use the product appropriately." The outliers, she says, are the 10 percent of girls who are physically capable of child-bearing at 11.1 years old, and "have significant cognitive and behavioral differences."Has that ever actually happened in the history of ever? And even if it did, I thought the only side effects were nausea and some other stuff with no health risks.
Why don't they just make a kids version of it, like they do with Advil. Have a cartoon character explain the steps in one-syllable words. Then the problem would be solved. Or maybe we could just make Plan A what it should be, effective birth control taught to children without the fear that they're going to go out fucking like rabbits the moment you tell them sex exist.
P.S. They already know it does as film and television has taught them so.
Hmm, I wonder out of simple curiosity what the status of the HPV vaccine is. I mean, did teens ever need to get permission from their parents to get it? The answer, surprisingly is not in California (As of Jan 1st, 2012)
California girls as young as 12 can soon receive the human papillomavirus , or HPV, vaccine without the consent of their parents. Last Sunday Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill into law, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2012.
“It’s always a close question as to what we might allow,” ABC News’ affiliate KABC-TV reported Brown as saying. “But we do that with other reproductive kinds of issues, and I felt this one was similar to what we’ve done before.”
The HPV vaccine, which includea the brands Gardasil and Ceravix, can be administered to girls as young as 9, and as old as 26. Each year, about 12,000 women get cervical cancer in the U.S., and almost all of these cancers are HPV-related, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The HPV vaccine can prevent several strains of the cancer.
The new law, sponsored by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and several other state health agencies, set off a flurry of protest from several conservative groups.
“Jerry Brown is deceptively telling preteen girls it will protect them from HPV, giving them a false sense of security that they can have the sexual activity they want without risking developing cervical cancer or a raft of other negative consequences,” Randy Thomasson, a spokesperson for SaveCalifornia.org, said in a statement.
Karen England of Capitol Resources Institute criticized the law because of what it might mean in taxpayer dollars.
“If her parents aren’t aware of it, she will be emancipated, and the state will be paying for every single minor that’s encouraged to go into a clinic and get these different boosters,” England told KABC-TV.
About 30 other states have enacted similar laws to California’s.
Dr. Mark Einstein, director of the departments of gynecologic oncology and obstetrics at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, said that the HPV vaccine is recommended by all scientific stake-holding organizations as routine for all 11- and 12-year-olds in the U.S., but that less than half of vaccine-eligible girls are getting the vaccine. Far fewer get all three doses.
“One of these challenges is the need for parental consent,” said Einstein. “In the U.K., Australia and other countries, such a need for parental consent does not exist, and their vaccine rates exceed 80 percent of vaccine-eligible girls.”
But hey, maybe that's his plan for economic growth. Make sure there's enough poor people that any job will be taken by those willing to work for pennies.
But back to the unplanned pregnancy stuff. One thing that I think is important is that women have control over their bodies instead of their parents having control over it. That seems like a fair thing to me, but hey, maybe I'm just crazy like that. You know, having a woman of any age being able to at least decide if she wants to wander down to the store and be not pregnant, instead of having to go and ask mom and dad if she could suddenly be not knocked up.
Just think of the time frame as well. In seventy-two hours, a girl has to:
1.) Recognize that she just had sex that could lead to pregnancy (overcoming terrible sex ed and a whole rainbow of rape methods)
2.) Find out that Plan B exists, will address her problem, and is obtainable for her (overcoming terrible sex ed, terrible healthcare, and terrible propaganda)
3.) Obtain a way of getting to a source of the drug (overcoming potentially vast distances, bad or non-existent transportation, and limited autonomy for minors)
4.) Obtain a way of paying for the drug (overcoming poverty, young people's limited access to anonymous sums)
5.) Convince a pharmacy to actually sell it to her (overcoming shame, fear, prejudice, and the high odds of running into a fundamentalist who objects to her choice)
Oh by all means let's add more steps to this process. Not to sound like a bad parent and all, but I don't want my future daughter to have to jump through so many hoops to get EMERGENCY contraceptives. While we're at it, let's put all fire extinguishers in a special locked safe at the fire station. It's as logical as a step to make.
The fear that society has is that a girl will have sex recklessly because the ability to get a pill without a parent's consent is stupid. I'm not a teen girl, but if I felt like crap after taking Plan B, I'd probably would think twice about using it as a primary means of birth control. But even so, is feeling like shit for a few days even remotely comparable to an unplanned pregnancy? I mean, really now.
I highly doubt that Plan B would become a primary method of birth control because of the cost and the pain involved anymore than abortion has. That is the main objection to that line of reasoning -It's been used so many times to argue against easy access to abortion that it's not even funny anymore.
I think it's a shame that their whole argument relies on the scare tactic of the pregnant 11-year-old rather than the reality of the pregnant 15-year-old, which is an actual thing that happens every day.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't find any reason to believe that the Obama administration fears of a rash of 11 year old girls using Plan B on a regular basis are very credible. And even though a child's parents may be extremely supportive of birth control or emergency contraceptives, a child may still feel uncomfortable and/or afraid to approach them about it. This is especially the case if she needs the contraceptive because she has been raped.
And please tell me at least that Obama restored Plan B to the federally funded rape kits at hospitals that Bush had gotten rid of... Oh, of course not, right. It is Obama after all. When asked about this subject he had this to say:
"who, me?"President Obama said on Thursday he “did not get involved” in the decision to prevent young girls from buying the controversial morning-after “Plan B” pill in drug stores. He told reporters at the White House the decision was made by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. But he gave it his full backing despite criticism from women’s health activists.
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